Congratulations to Professor Anja Neundorf and Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado who have won a BA small grant for their 'The economy, COVID-19, and the future of liberal democracy' project. It aims to test the impact of economic conditions and the political management of the global pandemic on individual values and voting behaviour with two survey experiments in the UK and the US. 

The project will implement a novel survey experiment in the UK and US, randomly assigning three treatment conditions to two samples of 1,000 individuals, representative of both the US and the UK populations. One of these conditions will highlight the unprecedented economic contraction and job losses forecasted with official data in both countries. The other two will prime different factors that could also drive populist and illiberal attitudes, namely real data on immigration pressures and the political management of the COVID-19 pandemic by the government. 

The survey will go live in the US in October, during the Presidential election campaign, and in November in the UK. The experiment will be particularly timely in assessing whether the economic situation, the management of the pandemic, or fears of immigration have joint, independent, or negligible effects on the prospects of both American presidential candidates in real world conditions.The first of the outputs is due to be presented in Spring 2021. 

 

First published: 18 September 2020

<< News