The Non-Consequences of COVID-19 on Left-Right Ideological Beliefs

Scholarship on past major crises, such as wars and depressions, argues that these events transformed mass attitudes about the role of the state. Motivated by these claims, we theorize reasons why the COVID-19 pandemic might have shifted citizens’ ideological beliefs and investigate whether it has. Using original panel data from the UK, we find no evidence that the pandemic affected beliefs about the role of government, even for those directly experiencing economic losses or new forms of state relief. In a follow-up survey experiment, we also find that voters do not change their opinions on redistribution or the role of government even when exposed to elite cues that frame the crisis as revealing the need for state expansion. Our findings suggest that crises may more commonly exert their effects on mass beliefs via the long-term feedback effects of elite-driven policy changes than through direct exposure to crisis conditions.