New Rochelle, NY, September 27, 2021 — Two surveys conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that support for vote by mail (VBM) fell sharply because Republicans became less worried about catching COVID-19. As Republicans became less concerned with catching COVID-19 they became far more opposed to VBM, according to the article published in the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal. Click here to read the article now.
The article titled “Trumped by Trump? Public Support for Mail Voting in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic” was coauthored by Joshua Clinton, from Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, Sarah Lentz, and Stephen Pettigrew, from the University of Pennsylvania.
“We show that the pandemic had a powerful impact on increasing support for mail-in voting – especially early in the pandemic,” state the authors. “Six weeks after our initial April [2020] survey, however, the bipartisan support for expanding mail-in voting that we initially observed had dissipated.”
The authors note that, “Over the course of our study, Trump tweeted about VBM 15 times – 11 times during the field period of our second survey.” This intense partisan messaging could have contributed to the change in opinions documented by these two surveys.
“This timely article explains how the unique mix of the pandemic and partisan politics shaped how people voted in 2020,” states Election Law Journal Editor-in-Chief David Canon, University of Wisconsin.