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From the onset of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in January 2020 to Election Day in November, the United States experienced over 9,400,000 cases and 232,000 deaths. This crisis largely defined the campaign between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, centering on the Trump administration′s efforts in mitigating the number of cases and deaths. While conventional wisdom suggested that Trump and his party would lose support due to the severity of COVID-19 across the country, such an effect is hotly debated empirically and theoretically. In this research, we evaluate the extent to which the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced support for President Trump in the 2020 election. Across differing modeling strategies and a variety of data sources, we find evidence that President Trump gained support in counties with higher COVID-19 deaths. We provide an explanation for this finding by showing that voters concerned about the economic impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on activity were more likely to support Trump and that local COVID-19 severity was predictive of these economic concerns. While COVID-19 likely contributed to Trump's loss in 2020, our analysis demonstrates that he gained support among voters in localities worst affected by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is considerable research on the role racial attitudes play in shaping white political preferences, relatively little is known about how racial attitudes influence white participation in democratic politics. We present a model examining the relationship between racial attitudes and political participation in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 U.S. national elections. Using a variety of measures of political participation, our analysis presents a clear finding: the direction of the relationship between latent conservative racial attitudes and political participation is asymmetrical among partisan sub-groups, with conservative racial attitudes motivating participation among white Republicans and, to a greater degree, depressing participation among white Democrats. This finding has stark implications for how racialized appeals are likely to be deployed in an era of increasing affective partisan polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09826-x.Correction: Political Behaviorhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09826-xAfter publication of original article, it came to author's attention that affiliations are given incorrect. The correct affiliations are given in this article.The original article has been corrected.Publisher's NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.By Carlos Algara; Sharif Amlani; Samuel Collitt; Isaac Hale and Sara KazemianReported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author [Extracted from the article]