Original
Between Withdrawal and Engagement: Disentangling the Effects of COVID-19 on Turnout
Abstract
This project marks the first test of the household-level turnout effects of living with someone who died from COVID-19. Drawing on policy feedback and threat literatures, I argue that the theoretical effects of close COVID contact are unclear. I link death records with the registered voter file to identity Americans who lived with a decedent, leveraging a triple-differences design to distinguish the effect of household COVID deaths on turnout from non-COVID ones in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Washington State. Household COVID deaths reduced turnout in all three states, though the effect was different (and larger) than non-COVID household deaths only in Washington. I thus conclude that while COVID deaths clearly lowered household turnout, they operated largely through the opportunity costs associated with household deaths more generally rather than a distinctly political response to the government’s handling of the pandemic.
中文
在退缩与参与之间：厘清COVID-19对投票率的影响
摘要
本项目首次检验与COVID-19死者同住对家庭层面投票率的影响。借鉴政策反馈与威胁文献，我认为与COVID的密切接触在理论上的效应尚不明确。我将死亡记录与登记选民档案相链接，以识别与死者同住的美国人，并利用三重差分设计，在明尼苏达州、北卡罗来纳州和华盛顿州区分家庭COVID死亡对投票率的影响与非COVID死亡的影响。家庭COVID死亡在三个州都降低了投票率，但仅在华盛顿州，其效应与非COVID家庭死亡不同（且更大）。因此我得出结论：虽然COVID死亡显然降低了家庭投票率，但其作用主要通过与家庭死亡普遍相关的机会成本，而非对政府疫情应对的独特政治反应。
关键词
投票率、COVID-19、家庭死亡、政策反馈、威胁、三重差分、机会成本