Effects of the Black Lives Matter Movement’s Peaceful Protests and Riots on the 2020 Presidential Election

Abstract

What effect, if any, did the Black Lives Matter protest wave throughout the summer of 2020 have on the presidential election in November of that year? Scholarly political theory constantly holds that peaceful protests positively impact the message of a protest in the eyes of the public. But, what about protestor-led violent demonstrations or riots? The literature is inconsistent as to the effect of riots on the opinion of the agenda of that protest. In this paper, I seek to find the effect of Black Lives Matter riots and peaceful protests on the share of Democratic votes in the 2020 presidential election. My results show that peaceful protests caused a shift of about 1.3% towards Democratic vote share in the 2020 presidential election. Likewise, I find that riots caused a positive shift of about 1.4% in Democratic vote share. These results add to the overall scholarly debate concerning the role of riots in politics and public opinion, since scholars have not yet come to an overall consensus regarding this relationship.