How COVID-19 Changed “the Anatomy” of Political Campaigning

Abstract

COVID-19 has rapidly affected our everyday life, businesses, disrupted the world trade and movements. It also impacted electoral processes around the world, changing everything – from how the campaign is conducted to voter engagement. Pandemic has canceled meetings, conventions, door-to door canvassing and moved a part of campaigning to the digital realm.

While some countries have decided to go ahead with elections, others with elections scheduled in 2020 have postponed them. Among those that have held elections during the pandemic, the South Korea has emerged as a model for having organised a highly successful electoral process, while protecting the health of its population. Others, such as the US, have set in general a very negative standard, ignoring health risks and putting both population and politicians in danger. However, it was a sharp difference between two competing candidates: Donald Trump and Joe Biden were taking very different approaches to campaigning during the pandemic and one of main difference was the way how they comply with pandemic rules.

This paper analyses how COVID-19 rewrote the rules of political campaigning in different parts of the worlds, taking as model for comparison the South Korea, the United States, Romania and the Republic of Moldova election campaigns.