Dulani, B;
Harris, A;
Lust, E;
Ferree, K;
Kao, K;
Ahsan Jansson, C;
Metheney, EA;
(2021)
Elections in the time of covid-19: the triple crises around Malawi’s 2020 presidential elections.
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
, 31
(S1)
pp. 56-68.
10.1080/17457289.2021.1924745.
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Abstract
In June 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Malawians went to the polls and voted to replace the incumbent government. Much like other natural disasters, the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying economic and political shocks had the potential to shake voters’ confidence in the government, reduce turnout, and/or reduce support for the incumbent if voters associated them with the ills of the pandemic. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the Coronavirus pandemic influenced Malawi’s 2020 elections. We consider how fear of infection and economic distress affected citizens’ trust and confidence in President Mutharika’s government, their willingness to turn out to vote, and their choices at the polls using data collected pre- and post-Covid. We find that fears about the virus and its economic impact did influence trust and confidence in the government to handle Covid but had little to no effect on either abstention or vote choice.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Elections in the time of covid-19: the triple crises around Malawi’s 2020 presidential elections |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/17457289.2021.1924745 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2021.1924745 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19; Malawi; elections; natural disasters |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10130841 |
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