Public health crises do not always seem to lead to an upsurge in extreme political views and protest voting, as a historical counter-example demonstrates: Contrary to what one might think, the 1918 Spanish flu in the Weimar Republic strengthened not the extreme parties or the right, but especially the SPD. Compared to pre-pandemic times, the left-wing party view recorded a significant increase that lasted until 1933.
The plague began towards the end of the First World War: in 1918 an influenza epidemic spread across Europe and Germany. Infected patients suffered from fever, cough, headache and body aches, many of which ended in death a few days later. It is estimated that in Germany alone, more than 400,000 people died from the Spanish flu in just a few months - comparable to a whole year of deaths in the First World War. Since the influenza pandemic coincided with the crucial phase of the First World War, the politicians took no action out of concern for the morale of the population. The press hardly reported either; there was censorship.
The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated that public health crises can contribute to the division of society and the emergence of extreme views and conspiracy ideologies. In Germany, but also in other countries, right-wing extremist groups in particular were able to benefit from this development. In this respect, it would seem reasonable to assume that this was also the case with the last pandemic, the Spanish flu, a good 100 years ago: Could this health crisis in the Weimar Republic have contributed to the rise of the National Socialists? A team led by Stefan Bauernschuster from the University of Passau investigated this - with surprising results.
Influenza mortality and election data analyzed
For their study, Bauernschuster and his colleagues determined the consequences of the Spanish flu and the associated deaths and consequences of the pandemic on politics in the Weimar Republic and, in particular, whether the pandemic influenced people's voting behavior at the time. "In a first step, we use death dates from 1904 to 1913 and use this as a basis to calculate constituency-specific mortality forecasts for the years 1914 to 1918," explains Bauernschuster. By comparing the death dates before and during the pandemic, the team was able to determine excess mortality from influenza and thus also where in Germany the flu was particularly severe and many people died.
In the second step, Bauernschuster and his team compared the development of voting behavior in regions particularly affected by the flu pandemic with those where there were fewer flu deaths. "Of course there were serious changes in the political system from the last Reichstag election in the German Empire in 1912 to the first election after that in 1919 in the Weimar Republic," explains the researcher. "These included the switch from majority to proportional representation, the lowering of the voting age, changes in the party landscape and the introduction of women's suffrage." The team therefore adjusted their analyzes so that the data became comparable, among other things by using the constituency boundaries the Kaiserreich, combining individual parties into blocks and taking account of constituency-specific changes.
Social Democrats benefited significantly
The evaluations revealed something surprising: "One might think that the Spanish flu was one of many factors that contributed to the rise of the National Socialists. In our paper, we show that this is not the case,” says Bauernschuster. "The pandemic has not strengthened the extreme parties, but the moderate left, specifically the SPD." In the German regions that were particularly affected by the Spanish flu, the left-wing party bloc and the SPD in particular recorded an increase of 8.1 percent compared to the result in the elections before the outbreak of the pandemic. Moreover, this positive effect for the moderate left was not only short-lived, but could be proven up to 1933, as the team reports.
Extreme left or right parties, on the other hand, were not strengthened by the pandemic. "There are no signs of an increased division in the affected areas," reports Bauernschuster. “Our evaluation, in which we break down the left block, shows that the moderate left wins with the SPD. The communist party even loses.” In order to be sure that other factors such as increased poverty or inequality during the World War years were not responsible for this effect, Bauernschuster and his colleagues also carried out analyses. "However, the inclusion of these control variables in our model does not change the effect of the Spanish flu," reports Bauernschuster. "We conclude that this swing to the left is really specifically driven by the Spanish flu."
Issue ownership theory confirmed
But why was the SPD in particular able to benefit from the flu pandemic and the associated public health crisis? “The issue ownership theory from political science provides the most plausible explanation for our results. This states that parties that occupy an issue and credibly signal expertise in it gain votes as soon as this issue becomes more important for the population," explains Bauernschuster. This was exactly the case with the Social Democrats: Even before the influenza pandemic, the SPD had included the issue of health in its election programs, especially with regard to the workforce, and was strongly represented in the self-governing bodies of the health insurance companies.
The researchers see further evidence of this connection in another party that was able to benefit from the development at the time: "Our analyzes show that the Liberals were also able to make political capital out of the pandemic - and thus exactly the party to which many doctors belonged and who had supported the social hygiene movement," says Bauernschuster.
Source: University of Passau; Technical article: CEPR Press Discussion paper no. 18277