You might think that a global public health crisis would boost public trust in experts, reinforce support for international cooperation, and restore faith in the multilateral institutions leading the response. You might, therefore, assume that the coronavirus pandemic wouldn't play in favor of the largely expert-blasting, populist nationalists who have swept to power in recent years. In truth, the picture is more mixed, and populists may ultimately benefit from the pandemic upheaval. A few thoughts:

First, populists aren't doing a markedly worse job than anyone else. The countries suffering the world's five largest death tolls — US, Brazil, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom — are all led by populists, but all that tells us is that several of the world's largest countries are run by populists (bigger populations will give you a higher total number of infections and deaths). When you look at the top ten countries by death rate, populists are barely half of the group (see our Graphic Truth, below). What's more, some prominent populists, like Hungary's Viktor Orbán or Turkey's Recep Erdogan, have managed the crisis well by acting early and decisively — perhaps too decisively for the comfort of democracy watchdogs in the case of Orbán.