The Impact of Corona Populism: Empirical Evidence from Austria and Theory

Abstract

I study the impact of corona populism – politics aimed at denying or downplaying the danger posed by COVID-19 – on the evolution of the pandemic using regional data from Austria. The right-wing FPÖ made a corona populist turn at the end of the first wave of infections. Using panel regression analysis, I show that the vote share of the FPÖ at the last national parliamentary elections is a strong predictor for the number of COVID-19 deaths per capita after the FPÖ switched their policy stance, while there is no correlation before the policy switch. Interestingly, I do not find a statistically significant correlation between the FPÖ vote share and the reported number of infections. I hypothesize that this can be traced back to a self-selection bias in testing, which causes a higher dark figure in FPÖ strongholds. To explore this hypothesis, I extend the classical SIRD model to incorporate conditional quarantine, and heterogeneous mixing of two groups of agents who react differently to the pandemic. Such a model can explain the nontrivial empirics: if mixing is sufficiently homophilic, an increase in the share of “corona sceptics” can cause an increase in the number of deaths without increasing the number of reported infections. I finally discuss the non-trivial implications of the interplay between group sizes, behavioral differences and the degree of homophily on public health outcomes within the theoretical model.