The development of political trust during the COVID-19 pandemic

The 27th of February marked the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic for the Netherlands. Since that time the government has implemented countless measures to contain the pandemic. Research into the effects of these measures show that political trust increased significantly as a reaction to the imposition of measures to contain the pandemic. Other research shows that older people are at a higher health risk than younger people, and younger people on the other hand are at higher risks of declining mental wellbeing due to the differential effects of the measures. The purpose of this paper is to determine how political trust has developed during the pandemic and how this differentiates between older and younger people. My expectation is that health and mental wellbeing play an important role in the differential impact on old and young during the pandemic. To do this a longitudinal panel study design will be employed using repeated-measures mediation analysis. The results show that political trust increased significantly from 2020 to 2021 and strongly declined again in 2022. The mediation analyses show that the mediating effect of health increased from 50 to 69 percent and of mental wellbeing from 37 to 50 percent from 2020 to 2021. Future search is recommended into the 2022 decline of political trust.