THE ROLE OF BENEFITS AND COSTS The COVID-19 pandemic effect on presidential election-2020 in the United States

Abstract

The year of 2020 was the most challenging year in modern history, where it will be remembered as the year that the COVID-19 pandemic took place. The COVID-19 pandemic led to worldwide lockdowns, where people all over the world had to adjust to a new lifestyle. The United States of America held a presidential election during the pandemic, which questioned the increase of the COVID-19 cases across the country. This master’s thesis will investigate if the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the presidential election-2020 in the United States. In order to investigate this topic, this quantitative study will use a cross-sectional analysis to display if the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the voter turnout in presidential election-2020. The theoretical framework for this master’s thesis is the rational choice theory, as this model investigates the rational behavior of how some citizens vote and if they vote. The theoretical framework will also investigate the benefits and costs of voter turnout. The rational choice theory suggests higher voter turnout in presidential election-2020, where it became a necessity for the states in the U.S. to have postal ballot available, to lower the increasement of COVID 19 cases. This quantitative study displays that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on voter turnout. However, the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on voter turnout was not statistically significant, where the effect was not large enough for statistical significance.