Health and Election Outcomes: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

• Published date: 01 June 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221113256
• Author: Costas Panagopoulos,Aaron C. Weinschenk
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(2) 712–724

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221113256

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Health and Election Outcomes: Evidence

from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Costas Panagopoulos

1

, and Aaron C. Weinschenk

2



Abstract

Recent research indicates that political developments and events can have important implications for health. In this study,

we use data from a large, nationally representative survey (N= 1750) f‌ielded in December 2020 to understand how the

2020 Presidential Election impacted self-reported health ratings. Several important f‌indings emerge. First, many

Americans report that their mental (14%) and general (6%) health has worsened compared to before the 2020

presidential election; similar number of Americans report improvements to their mental (15%) and general (8%) health.

Second, those who voted for Trump and who disagree that Biden won the election are signif‌icantly less likely than their

counterparts to report better mental, but not general, health compared to before the 2020 election. These relationships

persist even in the context of a wide range of controls, including demographics, political predispositions, and perceptions

of polarization.

Keywords

mental health, health and politics, health and elections, health, 2020 presidential election

Scholars working across a range of disciplines have be-

come more interested in understanding whether and how

political developments (e.g., polarization) and events

(e.g., elections) are related to health outcomes. Research

on the connection between politics and health has now

been published in journals related to political science,

medicine, psychology, biology, public health, and soci-

ology. It is apparent that interest in the links between

health and politics is widespread and growing. Given the

salience of presidential elections in the United States, one

important line of research that has emerged in this area has

focused on assessing the health consequences of elections.

Thus far, studies have found that U.S. presidential elec-

tions can have pronounced effects, at least on some

measures of health. For example, Yan, Hsia, Yeung, and

Sloan (2021) found that there were substantially more

days of poor mental health in states that 2016 Democratic

presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost in the month

following the election. Rosman et al. (2021) reported that

there was a signif‌icant increase in cardiac arrhythmias

(i.e., irregular heartbeat) during the 2016 US presidential

election. Relatedly, Mefford et al. (2020) found that “[t]he

rate of CVD [cardiovascular disease] hospitalizations in

the 2 days after the 2016 presidential election was 1.62

times higher compared to the rate in the same 2 days the

week prior”(27054).

In this study, we build upon and extend the growing

body of research on the connection between elections and

health outcomes. We are specif‌ically interested in ex-

amining how factors related to the 2020 presidential

election may be related to individual health. This study

makes several contributions to the literature. First, while

previous research has examined the 2008 (Stanton et al.

2010;Brown et al., 2021), 2012 (Ben-Ezra, et al., 2013),

and 2016 (Hoyt, Zeiders, Chakua, Toomey, and Nair

2018;Gonzalez et al. 2018;Morey et al. 2021;

Krueger, Westmoreland, Choi, Harper, Lightfoot,

Hammack, and Meyer 2021;Abelson et al. 2020;

Roche and Jacobson 2019;DeJonckheere, Fisher, and

Chang 2018;Yan, Hsia, Yeung, and Sloan 2021;Neupert,

Bellingtier, and Smith 2021) presidential elections, little

research has examined the impact of the 2020 election on

the health of Americans. This lacuna is especially

1

Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA,

USA

2

Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay,

Green Bay, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aaron C. Weinschenk, Department of Political Science, University of

Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311, USA.

Email: weinscha@uwgb.edu