Navigating Conflicting Partisan Elite Cues in a Crisis

Our study investigates how elite cues affect the public's attitudes and behavior during a crisis. When a crisis emerges, communities must work together. This paper explores attitudes and behavior during the COVID-19 crisis through a survey administered to the US public in May 2020, when debates were beginning over how to manage the crisis. While President Donald Trump distanced himself from nationally mandated protections and downplayed the seriousness of the virus, other politicians such as Ohio governor Mike DeWine and nonpartisan agencies like the Center for Disease Control encouraged extensive precautions. In this paper, we investigated whether co-partisan elite cues could change Americans’ willingness to socially distance. The study is important because it can shed light on how communities come together during other crises, such as natural disasters.