Ethnic diversity and political trust at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract Current research faces challenges in explaining how contextual factors account for variations in the rally effect in political trust during the COVID-19 pandemic. While systematic explanations of country-level differences are hard to establish by means of cross-sectional comparisons, we propose to compare subnational areas within a country to learn more about the role of contextual factors. In this research note, we argue that ethnic diversity is a crucial contextual factor that helps researchers understand differences in political trust at the onset of the pandemic. Specifically, we propose that the rally effect should be restricted to ethnically more homogeneous contexts. An analysis of geocoded household panel data from the Netherlands reveals a strong rally effect in ethnically homogenous areas, while political trust in ethnically diverse contexts appears not to respond to the pandemic. This suggests an entrenched geography of political trust, which is associated with ethnic divides and is even maintained under crisis.