Political Accountability and Selective Perception in the Time of COVID

That voters punish the incumbent president in bad times, and reward them in good times, has become a stylized fact of elections. Despite COVID-19 representing an unprecedented catastrophe, Trump’s approval ratings, unlike other world leaders, remained stable throughout 2020. To explore this puzzle, we surveyed the same Americans twice before the 2020 election—a period when COVID cases spiked. Instead of finding that the crisis’s severity affected Trump’s approval, we find the reverse—perception of the crisis depended on one’s prior political predispositions. People who already supported Trump were more likely to underestimate COVID fatalities and case rates, and less likely to perceive the crisis as worsening over time (daily infections doubled between interviews). Those who perceived the crisis to worsen, but continued to support Trump, expressed unwillingness to blame the president. A public so polarized that it fails to acknowledge disaster, or attribute blame, cannot hold its government accountable.