Partisanship, Attribution and Approval in a Public Health Shock

Abstract

A longstanding debate about electoral behaviour has concerned whether voters biasedly attribute blame for government performance. However, a disproportionate focus on negative outcomes and partisan issues has left several empirical questions about responsibility attribution unanswered. In this letter, we attempt to answer these by looking at how voters respond to a positive, nonpartisan public health shock. Through a survey experiment embedded in the British Election Study, we test whether voters incorporated new information when assigning credit to the government for the successful early rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations in England. We find that, in general, voters indeed attributed less responsibility to government when given information suggesting other institutions deserved credit for the rollout. Moreover, using longitudinal measures of partisanship, we show that only the newest Government supporters fail to update their attributions. Our findings indicate that, when considering the wider universe of cases, pessimism about electoral accountability may be overstated.