Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic pose a dual challenge for incumbents; they disrupt normal governance and intensify demands for accountability. In such contexts, voters evaluate performance under uncertainty, where outcomes depend only partly on how states function. This study examines performance voting under these conditions through the case of India’s 2021 state assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, which were held at the height of the country’s second and deadliest wave of COVID-19. Drawing on original cross-sectional survey data, we assess how voters weighed pandemic management alongside partisanship, social identity, and economic perceptions. Our findings show that while partisanship and socioeconomic factors remained central, pandemic management was a salient issue in all three states, and performance on this issue influenced vote choice in West Bengal and Kerala. These results suggest that even within a “flailing” state, marked by overlapping jurisdictions and weak coordination, citizens remained partially responsive to crisis governance. We argue that crises do not simply suspend accountability in such settings, but instead, state response to crises may offer a more informative signal for assessing performance because states are less constrained by social forces in these junctures.