  Elections are crucial for legitimating modern democracies, and giving all
candidates the possibility to run a proper electoral campaign is necessary for
elections' success in providing such legitimization. Yet, during a pandemic,
the risk that electoral campaigns would enhance the spread of the disease
exists and is substantive. In this work, we estimate the causal impact of
electoral campaigns on the spread of COVID-19. Exploiting plausibly exogenous
variation in the schedule of local elections across Italy, we show that the
electoral campaign preceding this latter led to a significant worsening of the
epidemiological situation related to the disease. Our results strongly
highlight the importance of undertaking stringent measures along the entire
electoral process to minimize its epidemiological consequences.
