Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-17-2025
Department 1
Political Science
Abstract
A longstanding literature in American foreign policy holds that the American public’s support for war significantly depends on the number of U.S. casualties in the conflict (their number, rate, trend, proximity, etc.). While a pandemic is clearly not a war, many observers and political leaders have characterized the U.S. public policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic using the metaphor of wartime. This raises the question of whether such characterizations are more than mere metaphor. Has the American public’s response to pandemic-related casualties—cases and deaths—followed similar patterns to those found in the literature on public opinion and war? In this study, the authors assess the public’s responsiveness to COVID-19 casualties at different stages in the pandemic. Utilizing two large, 50-state surveys conducted during the two largest COVID surges, in winter 2021 and winter 2022, we test several hypotheses from the public opinion and war literature, including that proximity—spatial and temporal—influences public responses and that the public becomes desensitized to casualties over time. Safarpour and Baum find that in many respects, the public’s response to the pandemic does indeed mirror the patterns found with respect to public opinion and war.
Copyright Note
This is an author-produced version of an article accepted for publication by Oxford Academic following peer review. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for non-commercial and non-derivative uses.
DOI
10.1093/ijpor/edaf021
Version
Accepted Manuscript/Postprint
Recommended Citation
Safarpour, Alauna and Matthew Baum. "Pandemic, Governors, and Public Opinion: The Effect of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths on Public Support for America’s Governors." International Journal of Public Opinion Research 37, Issue 3 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edaf021.
Required Publisher's Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Oxford Academic's International Journal of Public Opinion Research journal following peer review. The version of record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edaf021.