Sandy the Rainmaker: The Electoral Impact of a Super Storm

Abstract

The arrival of Hurricane Sandy within a week of the 2012 presidential election caused unprecedented disruption to the final days of the campaign and Election Day in areas that were affected. The precise impact of the storm on those areas hit hardest was not necessarily clear. Contrary to prior research on the effect of disasters on electoral outcomes, we find that the president's vote share was ultimately increased in storm-affected areas by about four percentage points, plus or minus two points. While those states most heavily affected were unlikely to give their electoral vote to Romney because of other factors, we present counterfactual analyses that show that such a storm could have had a significant impact on swing states: although the storm only affected some areas, we show that Virginia would likely have been won by Romney were it not hit at all, whereas North Carolina would likely have gone for Obama had it been directly in the storm's path.Yamil Velez is a doctoral student at Stony Brook University. His current research deals with contextual influences on public opinion and the moderating role of personality. He can be reached at yamil.velez@stonybrook.edu. David Martin is a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University whose research focuses on the interaction between social identity and context in determining institutional trust and political participation. He can be reached at david.martin@stonybrook.edu.

Racial Resentment, Hurricane Sandy, and the Spillover of Racial Attitudes into Evaluations of Government Organizations

“…Our general contention is that racial attitudes should be brought to bear on evaluations of FEMA, but that this spillover will be conditioned not only by the activation of an individual's racial attitudes, but also by that individual's connection to Hurricane Sandy. Following other scholars who studied the impact of Hurricane Sandy (Velez & Martin, ), we argue that geographic proximity to the storm affected how people viewed President Obama and thus served as a linking event in this context. We expected that Hurricane Sandy served as a linking event because experiencing a natural disaster affects people's motivation to consume information and the content of the information they choose to consume.…”

“…A common narrative surrounding Hurricane Sandy was that it solidified Barack Obama's lead over his rival, Mitt Romney, and helped to shepherd him into the White House for a second term (although some scholars have challenged the true electoral impact of Hurricane Sandy, see Pew Research Center, ; Velez & Martin, ). Regardless, the President was lauded for successfully managing the federal government's response to the crisis, with two‐thirds of Romney's supporters giving the President favorable ratings (Cohen, Craighill, & Clement, ).…”

“…The public was also apparently satisfied with the response, as a poll from Quinnipiac University administered to New York voters from November 14–18 revealed that 84% of respondents thought President Obama did an “excellent” or “good” job responding to the storm (Carroll, ). There is even evidence that President Obama's vote share was higher in regions impacted by Hurricane Sandy than in comparable unaffected regions (Velez & Martin, ). These generally favorable assessments are startling in the current era of polarized political parties and elites (Hetherington, ; Layman & Carsey, ; Fiorina & Abrams, ; Fiorina, Abrams, & Pope, ).…”

The political dynamics of voter retrospection and disaster responses

“…Some studies do not address this heterogeneity when comparing the voting gap between affected and unaffected areas (Achen and Bartels, 2004; Cole, Healy, and Werker, 2012). Others apply statistical tools to alleviate the bias caused by this heterogeneity (Velez and Martin, 2013; Bodet, Thomas, and Tessier, 2016). Concretely, Bodet, Thomas, and Tessier (2016) highlight that socio‐political conditions in flooded regions as compared to non‐flooded regions of Calgary were not equivalent.…”

“…Very few studies engage in process tracing. Most rely on co‐variation by establishing that government disaster policies have been criticised and that the incumbent government subsequently lost votes (Velez and Martin, 2013; Eriksson, 2016). However, they do not investigate the causal link between an unfavourable public perception of government policies and the decline in government support.…”