Work

Replication Data for: Pandemics and the Polarization of Reality: Evidence from Europe and the United States

Year: 2026

Type: dataset

Abstract: During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens of democratic nations faced a trade-off between civil liberties and public welfare as governments implemented measures to protect public health. Using surveys conducted at multiple intervals across five Western democracies, we examine how citizens’ views on this trade-off evolved. We find that early in the pandemic, political affiliation was not a major predictor of willingness to sacrifice rights, and there was little partisan divide in either the U.S. or Europe. In later stages of the pandemic, however, political affiliation became the primary predictor in the United States, and the partisan gap widened substantially there, while no comparable partisan divide emerged in Europe. We also show that the partisan gap in the U.S. narrows considerably once conditioning on subjective beliefs about disease risk, suggesting that different interpretations of the same information about the disease contributed to the divide.

Source: Harvard Dataverse

DOI: 10.7910/dvn/lzvwuv

Authors: Alsan, Marcella, Kim, Minjeong Joyce, Stantcheva, Stefanie, Yang, David

Institutions: Stanford University, University of Michigan, Harvard University

Topic: Electoral Systems and Political Participation

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W7212967276

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