According to the study by the Institute of the World Economy (IfW) in Kiel, Germany, the López Obrador administration lost 8% in popularity due to its handling of the coronavirus crisis.
A study carried out in Germany links the popularity of different governments with the number of registered COVID-19 cases and their management of the pandemic. Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United States are among those that have lost the most support between February and July.
The work of the Institute of World Economy (IfW) in Kiel, released on September 7th, that 35 countries that were analyzed to quantify the political effects of the government reaction to the health and economic crisis unleashed by the Sars-CoV2 coronavirus.
But as the months passed, different trajectories began to be glimpsed. In countries where cases continued to rise, support for the Executive dropped again rapidly in the polls, especially in those in which the containment measures taken were not fully understood by the population.
“There are significant differences. Governments with mismanagement of the pandemic significantly sink their re-election options, “says the director of the IfW research center, Christoph Trebesch.
The study establishes an average difference of ten percentage points in support for the government in countries with fewer cases compared to those with many more coronavirus infections.
The Australian government is, among those analyzed, one of the few that has seen its support grow the most between February and July, with a difference of more than 30 percentage points, followed by Slovakia, with close to 20 percentage points, the Netherlands, and Argentina, with around 17 percentage points each.
At the opposite extreme is Romania, with a drop in support for the Executive of 15 percentage points, followed by the United States and Mexico (8 percentage points), Japan (6), United Kingdom (5), and Hungary and Spain (3) .
The Peruvian government has seen its support increase by about ten percentage points and Chile by eight, according to data from this German study. Brazil lost just over two percentage points.
Researchers have used weekly data from voting intention polls, as well as numbers of new infections and deaths from COVID-19, indicators of economic activity and measures to contain the pandemic.
