Did the first round of the local elections cost the candidates their lives?

For a large section of the public, it is widely accepted that the holding of the first round of the local elections on 15 March led to a further wave of Covid-19 infections. Following these elections, numerous press articles (Mediapart, Le Monde, La Croix, La Voix du Nord) and television reports have featured accounts from people who claim to have been infected as a result of the elections taking place. In most cases, these are candidates in the local elections, and it is easy to see how they may have been particularly exposed to the virus. For these candidates, municipal campaigns involve handing out leaflets, holding meetings in enclosed spaces, monitoring polling stations, celebrating victory for some and coming to terms with collective defeat for others. However, it is not yet clear whether the sum of these adverse experiences constitutes a statistical trend. That is why, in a research article summarised in this Blog post, the authors sought to address this question more systematically: did candidates in the local elections experience a particularly high mortality rate during March and April this year?