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Rally Effect in the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Role of Affectedness, Fear, and Partisanship
[journal article]
Abstract When the Covid-19 pandemic hit internationally in March 2020, governments and political incumbents received exceptionally high approval ratings. Such a sudden spike of public support in times of crisis is often explained as the ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect. This paper has three goals: first, to ex... view more
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit internationally in March 2020, governments and political incumbents received exceptionally high approval ratings. Such a sudden spike of public support in times of crisis is often explained as the ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect. This paper has three goals: first, to examine whether a rally effect indeed occurred; second, to analyse whether and how much it is related to (i) affectedness, i.e. the occurrence of infections on individual and aggregate level, and (ii) fear of Covid-19; and third, to examine an assumed moderating effect of partisanship. We merged individual survey data from an online survey conducted in September 2020 as part of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) with infection rates on the state level (Bundesländer) published by the Robert Koch Institute. We detect a striking rally effect in all partisan camps. Furthermore, we identify fear of Covid-19 as the driving mechanism while there is no evidence that affectedness is a major force behind the rally effect. Furthermore, we show that partisanship takes on a moderating role for fear of Covid-19 regarding satisfaction with government.... view less
Keywords
microcensus; epidemic; affectedness; anxiety; partiality; political leadership; crisis behavior; Federal Republic of Germany
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Political Science
Free Keywords
COVID-19; Coronavirus; Rally Effect; GLES Tracking Januar 2020, T45 (ZA6839 v1.1.0) ; GLES Tracking Mai 2020, T46 (ZA6849 v2.0.0) ; GLES Tracking September 2019, T44 (ZA6837 v1.0.0) ; GLES Tracking September 2020, Wiederholungsbefragte T46W (ZA6842 v1.0.0) ; GLES Tracking September 2020, T47 (ZA6841 v1.0.0) ; Langfrist-Online-Tracking, T43 (GLES) (ZA6833 v1.1.0) ; Mikrozensus 2017
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 1-21
Journal
German Politics (2021)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2021.2016707
ISSN
1743-8993
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0