Abstract
ObjectivesGovernments around the world have implemented numerous policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This research examines the political issues resulting in public opinion concerning their responses to the pandemic via an international perspective. The objectives of this study are to: (1) measure the association and determine whether differences in political support can be attributed to the presence of approval ratings during the pandemic, and to (2) identify exceptional cases based on statistical predictions.MethodsWe collect information from several open-sourced surveys conducted between June and September 2020 of public sentiment concerning governments’ response toward COVID-19. The 11 countries in our sample account for over 50% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The study includes country-specific random effects to take into account the data’s clustered structure. We consider “political partisanship” and “pre-pandemic approval ratings in 2019” as two potential explanatory variables and employ a mix-effect regression for bounded responses via variable transformation and the wild bootstrap resampling method.ResultsAccording to the wild bootstrap method, the mixed-effect regression explains 98% of the variation in approval ratings during the pandemic in September 2020. The findings reveal partisan polarization on COVID-19 policies in the U.S., with opposing supporters most likely to express negative sentiments toward the governing party.ConclusionsThe evidence suggests that approval ratings during the pandemic correlate to differences in political support and pre-pandemic approval ratings, as measured by approval ratings from the views between governing coalition supporters and opponents.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has put governments worldwide under extreme pressure to react fast and decisively
The evidence suggests that approval ratings during the pandemic correlate to differences in political support and pre-pandemic approval ratings, as measured by approval ratings from the views between governing coalition supporters and opponents
Several contemporaneous studies target the impact of COVID-19 on political attitudes and behavior, such as [1, 2] comparing respondents’ political attitudes in 15 European countries and finding that public support for governing parties increases in response to lockdown policies. [3] conclude that approval of incumbent politicians falls as COVID-19 cases grow. [4] investigate the most important predictor variables influencing the satisfaction of citizens on their governments’ responses to the pandemic based on five covariates for analysis: the number of confirmed cases per million population, the number of deaths per million population, governments’ containment and health policies, their stringency policies, and their economic support policies
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has put governments worldwide under extreme pressure to react fast and decisively. [4] investigate the most important predictor variables influencing the satisfaction of citizens on their governments’ responses to the pandemic based on five covariates for analysis: the number of confirmed cases per million population, the number of deaths per million population, governments’ containment and health policies, their stringency policies, and their economic support policies. Their results reveal that people pay stronger attention to the “number” of government battles against COVID-19 rather than what policies a government may initiate
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