Do elections make you sick? Evidence from first‐time voters

Abstract

Despite the best efforts of governments to mitigate conflict during elections, there is evidence that elections can adversely affect health. Most studies focus on mental health, finding that higher levels of psychological distress occur during campaign periods, on Election Day and following the election. For example, Lotto (2016) and Williams and Medlock (2017) suggest that the stigmatization and marginalization of minorities, immigrants and the poor in recent U.S. election campaigns led to anxiety and psychological distress among the targeted groups. Likewise, clinically significant stress was more commonly reported by young women and others who were more likely to be disadvantaged by the election outcome (DeJonckheere et al., 2018;Hagan et al., 2020).Similar levels of stress and anxiety have been documented in India, where political attacks on minority groups and liberals escalated in the run-up to the 2019 general election (Ganesan, 2018), and in Taiwan, psychiatrists reported a 30% increase in anxiety attacks and related disorders in some hospitals during the 2012 election campaign (The Telegraph, 2012). The pathology surrounding negative psychological reactions to political campaigns is so common that it has been referred to in several countries as "election syndrome" or "election stress disorder" (

Impact of Residential Area Characteristics and Political Group Participation on Depression Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Results of an 11-Year Longitudinal Study

“…These mechanisms involve party-based trust biases, which result in a weaker sense of political community that can raise the possibility of increased levels of hostility between people with different political orientations and promote feelings of uncertainty about who can represent their views ( Lin & Yan, 2022 ). In this context, a growing body of evidence supports the resulting phenomenon of “the health cost of politics” ( Smith, 2022 ; Smith et al, 2019 ), “political depression,” and “election stress disorder” ( Chang & Meyerhoefer, 2023 ; Hoyt et al, 2018 ; Krupenkin et al, 2019 ; Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2018 ; Roche & Jacobson, 2019 ; Simchon et al, 2020 ; Tashjian & Galván, 2018 ). As older people have stronger feelings of psychological attachment to an ideological in-group upon accepting relevant party cues ( Devine, 2015 ), those engaged in political groups are more likely to be influenced by politics, thereby developing depression, compared to those who engage in nonpolitical groups.…”