Natural disasters and electoral outcomes

Masiero, Giuliano; Santarossa, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101983

Cited by 38 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“… Ramos and Sanz (2020) show that unintended wildfires up to nine months ahead of the elections increased support to the incumbent party's vote share in the following elections. Masiero and Santarossa (2020) also find that harmful earthquakes significantly increase the incumbent mayors' probability of being reelected and their vote share.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Too afraid to vote? The effects of COVID-19 on voting behaviour

Fernandez-Navia¹,

Polo-Muro

Tercero‐Lucas

2021

European Journal of Political Economy

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This paper studies the causal effect of local exposure to COVID-19 on voting behaviour and electoral outcomes using evidence from the regional elections held in Spain on 12 July 2020. Exploiting the variation in exposure to COVID-19 and using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we show that turnout was between 2.6 and 5.1 percentage points lower in municipalities that experienced positive cases of COVID-19. In addition, the results show a substantial increase in the probability of voting for nationalist parties. We discuss the idea of perceived fear being the potential mechanism driving our results.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Too afraid to vote? The effects of COVID-19 on voting behaviour

Fernandez-Navia¹,

Polo-Muro

Tercero‐Lucas

2021

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…10 Politicians could also benefit economically if they have private involvement in the firms contracted for providing relief, and they could use those private returns to invest in their re-election campaigns. Some scholars argue that voters irrationally punish politicians for natural disasters (Heersink et al, 2017; Achen & Bartels, 2017), while others find that voters are rational in these responses because disasters provide new information about incumbents (Ashworth et al, 2018; Masiero & Santarossa, 2020). Evidence from the U.S. suggests that voters punish politicians for disasters but reward them for providing relief (Gasper & Reeves, 2011), 11 especially when they provide relief closer to elections.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Un)Natural Disasters: Electoral Cycles in Disaster Relief

Cooperman

2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Emergency spending is often exempt from campaign period restrictions and procurement guidelines, making it attractive for opportunistic politicians, but natural disasters are seen as outside political business cycles. However, droughts are frequent but challenging to measure, so politicians can leverage discretion for electoral gain. This paper analyzes electoral cycles, term limits, and partisan targeting around municipal drought declaration in Northeast Brazil. Two sources of exogeneity (rainfall shocks, electoral calendar) isolate the effect of non-climatic factors on drought declarations. I find that drought declarations, which trigger relief, are more likely in mayoral election years. Incumbents are more likely to win re-election if they declare a drought in the election year, during below or even above average rainfall. The results are consistent with interviews suggesting voters reward competent mayors and mayors trade relief for votes. This study highlights the interaction between distributive and environmental politics, which has increasing consequences due to climate change.

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“…By leveraging variation stemming from a stochastic and unpredictable event, the COVID-19 outbreak, we also contribute to the literature that investigates government responses to natural disasters to identify the relationship between policy action and voter responses (e.g. Achen and Bartels, 2004 ; Bechtel and Hainmueller, 2011 ; Gasper and Reeves, 2011 ; Healy and Malhotra, 2013 ; Malhotra and Kuo, 2008 ; Masiero and Santarossa, 2021 ). Our focus also overlaps with the small yet growing strand of papers looking into the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on political attitudes ( Amat et al, 2020 ; Bruck et al, 2020 ; Bol et al, 2020 ; Bækgaard et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%