The ability to claim credit for government programs and spending gives incumbents an important advantage. Incumbents can generate support among constituents by advertising their efforts to lobby for additional funding, and if politicians use that money effectively, voters might reward incumbents at the ballot box. Of course, if politicians cannot use increased revenues to enact policies and programs that voters prefer, then increased aid may not improve incumbents’ performance.
Pinpointing the effect of economic windfalls on the electoral fortunes of politicians is difficult. The conditions that result in an influx of federal revenue may benefit or harm incumbents’ electoral prospects for other reasons. To overcome this challenge, our research considers the fact that some states are overrepresented in Congress. Membership in the House of Representatives is based on states’ populations, but each state receives at least one representative regardless of population. Moreover, all states receive exactly two senators regardless of population. Members of Congress enjoy much discretion over the formulas through which aid is distributed, which can bias the process in favor of states with more delegates. Our research finds that pandemic assistance varied based on congressional representation. Specifically, for every additional senator or representative per million residents, our findings show that the federal government granted roughly $1,000 in additional aid per resident. In other words, states with more representation received more funding. By studying the additional aid that was disbursed due to extra congressional representation, we were able to isolate the effect of COVID-19 spending on statewide election results.
Our findings reveal a strong relationship between federal pandemic aid and incumbents’ performance in the 2020, 2021, and 2022 elections. Data from the seven years preceding the pandemic suggest that incumbents—specifically senators, governors, and members of the House of Representatives—in overrepresented states enjoyed a small, persistent electoral advantage relative to incumbents in other states. However, this advantage rose significantly after Congress appropriated federal pandemic aid. Our analyses suggest that every additional $1,000 in aid per resident increased incumbents’ vote share by 2.5–4.0 percentage points.
This relationship holds even after accounting for the effects of various factors in each state, including incumbents’ past performance, population density, the stringency of COVID-19 measures in March 2020, and the Republican Party’s vote share in the 2016 presidential election. Two factors may have contributed to incumbents’ advantage during the pandemic. First, voters in states that received more aid ended up with more disposable income. Second, people in states that received more aid experienced modestly lower rates of mortality from COVID-19.
Our findings suggest that access to government resources can provide a crucial advantage to incumbents during economic crises. Moreover, the fact that pandemic aid was unequally distributed highlights both the direct and indirect effects of increased political representation. Not only did states with more representation per resident secure more revenues, but the politicians serving in those states appeared to benefit electorally because of the windfall. A rough calculation based on our findings suggests that between 2020 and 2022, incumbent parties would have lost control of five Senate seats and seven governorships if those states had received the same amount of aid per capita as the states with the least representation in Congress relative to their population.
Our work expands on previous research by focusing on the electoral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic at the state level, an area previously underexplored. Our analysis not only sheds light on the political ramifications of the recent pandemic but also contributes to a deeper understanding of how government programs and spending can influence the democratic process.