What drives political support? Evidence from a survey experiment at the onset of the corona crisis

ABSTRACT In times of severe crises, citizens are frequently found to rally-‘round-the-flag – i.e. to increase trust in their government. Drawing on an original survey experiment with real-world information at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, we portray the saliency of rally-relevant issues of the crisis. Contrary to our expectation, this priming effect lowers governmental trust. Mediation analyses show that respondents are more trusting towards their in-group, but simultaneously display less pride in institutions and less positive attitudes towards the political elite, which leads to a reduction in governmental trust. Our study shows that crises do not always lead to a rally-‘round-the-flag effect – it crucially depends on whether people consider their democratic institutions capable of coping with the crisis. Moreover, our findings demonstrate the need to unravel the black box of the rally-effect to get a more accurate picture of the driving forces behind governmental trust during crises.