LAUSR

As Forrest Gump’s mama liked to say, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” And so it is, when an editor places a call for a symposium on a certain subject, in this case, “America in the 2020 Elections.” Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) received many submissions for this mini-symposium and ultimately accepted four articles in this issue that in some form or fashion relate to the political status of the United States in the unique 2020 election cycle. Without question, a global pandemic grabbed the attention of the American voter, but how political behavior responded to this deadly threat was filtered through the partisan lens of polarized contemporary politics. But COVID-19 was not the only issue on the minds of voters. The shocking killing of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, instantly revived the waning influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, making it far more popular than it had ever been, as millions saw the video or otherwise found out about this tragedy. As per the last 10 years or so, technological advances and the ubiquitous dissemination of news via social media also gave rise in 2020 to more refined strategies for reaching the American voter in the Democratic presidential nomination contests. Finally, as an amplified trend since the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016, in 2020, America witnessed the greatest amount of online incivility via tweets in congressional elections since the genesis of Twitter in 2006. The sequencing of the articles is deliberate and purposeful based on the unfolding of major events in the 2020 elections. First, Brodnax and Sapiezynski (2022) show us, with novel data from the Facebook Ad Library, that the 2020 contests for the Democratic presidential nomination broke with precedent due to candidates’ emphasis on digital advertising targeting potential supporters and political donors located in their home states during the invisible primary season (pre-Iowa caucuses). Digital ads are much cheaper than television broadcasting, and it is a much nimbler way to reach supporters with tailored messages seeking the two most precious commodities in electoral politics: money and votes. The focus on home states as a base of political support was utilized by all 26 major Democratic candidates the authors collected data on. To be sure, strategies pivoted toward the early primary contests (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina) as these elections neared, but candidates’ concentration on their home state as an anchor for cultivating political support in 2020 has no historical precedent, and as Brodnax and Sapiezynski suggest, “digital ads may be the new direct mail” in presidential campaigns. VanDusky-Allen, Utych, and Catalano (2021) provide insight on how Democrats and Republicans in the electorate viewed state-level actions geared toward handling the novel coronavirus. With survey data and experimental data looking at mass opinions around the initial outbreak of COVID-19 (May 2020) and the re-opening or resumption of most normal activities months later (August 2020), the authors consider the impressions of Democrats and Republicans based on a major political cue, the party affiliation of the governor. During the early stages of the pandemic, affiliates of both parties viewed political performance of their governors and the effectiveness of policies principally through a partisan lens. Hence, Democrats gave higher marks for the actions taken by a Democratic governor and Republicans did the same if they had a fellow Republican governor at the helm. Because of the partisan division on whether to prioritize health and safety (Democrats) or maintaining some degree of economic sustenance (Republicans), Democrats and Republicans made assumptions that governors of their party responded to the health crisis with expectations along this politicized fault line. Finally, when most states began easing restrictions, VanDusky-Allen, Utych, and Catalano find an interesting asymmetry in partisan behavior regarding evaluations of state-level responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, “Democrats relied on both