The pandemic’s potential impact on elections

A new study has found a positive association between the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and political approval ratings of the head of government in a particular region. This suggests that incumbent governments may have an advantage in elections held during the pandemic.

It has been published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper’s lead and corresponding author, Sam Yam Kai Chi, Associate Professor and Dean’s Chair in the Department of Management & Organisation, tells us more about this study.

Q: You are a business professor, what sparked you to do this study that is more on political sciences?

I don’t see this as a political science paper, but more of a leadership paper. I research leadership so political rating data are in some ways measures of leadership effectiveness. I was surprised when I first eyeballed some of these data back in March and found that many world leaders’ ratings increase despite their poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. I decided to look at these data more carefully.

Q: What did you analyse, and what are the findings?

I worked with an international research team for this study. My co-authors come from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Washington; Temple University; Sun Yat-Sen University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, we analysed over 2 million citizens’ daily approval ratings of their respective world leader. The data was collected from 11 countries/regions – Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For US citizens, they also provided weekly approval ratings of their respective governors across 50 US states. The approval ratings were from the first 120 days of 2020.

We find that many citizens increased their support for their leaders during the pandemic, across regions that are culturally and geographically diverse, and even when they may not like their leaders before the pandemic. There are more nuances beyond just a positive effect of COVID-19 on leader support. We also find that politicians who have handled the pandemic relatively well do not enjoy more support than politicians who have handled it poorly. This effect also seems to transcend political ideology, at least in the US states’ data. In other words, both liberal and conservative governors enjoy an increase in support as the pandemic worsens.

Q: Does any of the findings come as surprising to you?

We are certainly surprised that politicians who have handled the pandemic relatively well do not enjoy even more support. We are also surprised that politicians who were widely unpopular before the pandemic also enjoyed a boost in their ratings. Interestingly, we found that governors of US states where major disasters are common (e.g., hurricanes, tornados, etc.) actually enjoyed less of a boost in ratings, presumably because residents in states with more natural disasters might be less sensitive to external threats.

Q: I think some of our local audience would ask why Singapore is not part of this study.

We bought our political approval ratings data from two different companies. As Singapore is not in the dataset, we are unable to analyse for Singapore.

Q: What research projects are you working on next?

I work on many projects at any given time. In terms of COVID-19, I am working on projects on how COVID-19 shapes organisational and team culture. In one project, my colleagues and I find that COVID-19 is positively associated with a tighter culture formation. Tight cultures have strong and clearly communicated norms and severe sanctions for deviant behavior, whereas loose cultures express norms in an ambiguous manner and have a high tolerance for deviant behavior.

Countries like Japan and Germany represent prototypically tight cultures, whereas countries like the US and Brazil are considered as having loose cultures. We find that COVID-19 is making teams and organisations to be tighter, with implications on lower organisational deviance but at the expense of creativity.

Beyond behavioral studies related to COVID-19, my ongoing research has been on the future of work and how employees and consumers react to the increased use of robotics in organisations.