Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/236272 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14241
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of participating in public events, among them elections. We assess whether the voter turnout in the 2020 local government elections in Italy was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We do so by exploiting the variation among municipalities in the intensity of the COVID-19 outbreak as measured by the mortality rate among the elderly. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the elderly mortality rate decreased the voter turnout by 0.5 percentage points, with no gender differences in the behavioural response. The effect was especially strong in densely populated municipalities. We do not detect statistically significant heterogeneous effects between the North and the South or among different levels of autonomy from the central government.
Subjects: 
COVID-19
outbreak
pandemic
voter turnout
mortality rate
Italian municipalities
JEL: 
D72
D81
H70
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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