Contagious politics and COVID-19: does the infectious disease hit populist supporters harder?

Abstract

As an example of a typical right-wing populist, Jair Bolsonaro downplayed Covid-19 and rejected scientific evidence to address the pandemic. We argue that both his communication style and approach to crisis management had consequences for the behavioural patterns of his followers, which, in turn, had public health implications. Building on survey research, we demonstrate how Bolsonaro’s supporters were less likely to consider the pandemic as a key challenge for the country, less worried about getting infected and less likely to wear masks. We show that this ‘riskier’ behaviour had concrete repercussions. Even after controlling for confounders such as population density, age, education and wealth, municipalities with higher aggregate support for Bolsonaro had higher Covid-19 infection rates in 2020 and saw more people dying from the virus.