Add to ORKGWe estimate the impact of French town hall elections held in mid-March 2020 on themortality of 163,000 male candidates aged above 60. Their excess mortality during Marchand April was similar to the general population. We compare candidates in cities withtwo candidate lists to those in cities with only one list, as elections are more intense incontacts in the former group. We also use a regression discontinuity design and investigatemortality in 2020 depending on how candidates fared in the 2014 election. We cannot detectany causal effect of active participation in the 2020 elections on mortality