Rally‐Round‐the‐Flag: The Case of COVID‐19 in Denmark

ABSTRACT Rally‐round‐the‐flag describes a situation where voters rally behind their government and leader in the fight against an external enemy. The COVID‐19 pandemic was such an external enemy and Danish voters responded immediately with an increased support of about seven percentage points for the government and a significant 33 percentage points increase in approval ratings for the Prime Minister. However, this effect gradually diminished and had completely disappeared by the time of the general election on November 1, 2022. The article employs a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) using all 283 publicly available opinion polls on party choice from the 2019–2022 throughout the election period, along with 35 measures of the Prime Minister's approval rating.