15:30 - 17:45
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Shared by Panellists
Discussant/s:
Noam Lupu
Meeting Room H

Arndt Leininger, Max Schaub
Strategic alignment in times of crisis: Voting at the dawn of a global pandemic

Leonardo Baccini, Thomas Sattler
Austerity, Economic Vulnerability, and Populism

Costin Ciobanu
Blame and credit attribution for economic shocks

Jane Green, Lawrence McKay, Will Jennings, Gerry Stoker
Perceptions of Local Economic Decline: who perceives decline, and why does it matter?

Max Joosten
Exploring preference prioritization under austerity
Strategic alignment in times of crisis: Voting at the dawn of a global pandemic
Arndt Leininger 1, Max Schaub 2
1 Freie Universität Berlin
2 WZB Social Science Center Berlin

Natural disasters are likely to increase in the near future. How does the anticipation of such events influence voting behavior? We study the effect of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice. We combine a case study of a local election in Bavaria, Germany, with original survey data. The election took place at the beginning of the pandemic, when only some parts of Bavaria had recorded cases. We find that local outbreaks favored candidates from the political party that was governing at the state level, and show that established theories of voting behavior cannot easily explain this effect. We theorize that our findings are driven instead by a `strategic alignment' mechanism, whereby voters choose the party or candidate they believe is best placed to help them through the crisis. We confirm the validity of our mechanism with a survey experiment fielded during the pandemic.