Do green parties in government benefit from natural catastrophes? How wildfires are linked to voting

IF 2.9 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Electoral Studies Pub Date : 2024-02-17 DOI:10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102749

Anton Kronborg , Frederik Hedegaard , Isak Klindt , Clara Vandeweerdt

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether wildfires are linked to increases in vote share for a green party in government. We argue that natural disasters move climate change action up on voters’ agendas, consequently affecting electoral behavior. Making use of the impact of an intense wildfire season in Sweden in 2018, we analyze changes in propensity to vote for a green governing party after experiencing wildfires in the election year. The Green party’s vote share is significantly larger than expected in affected municipalities compared to unaffected municipalities, with an overall effect size of about 1 percentage point in the national election and 1.2 percentage points in the local election. These effect sizes are substantial given typical green party vote shares. Meanwhile, the incumbent Social Democratic party appears to have been electorally punished for the fires. The findings contribute to the literature on natural disasters and climate opinion, as well as on the impact of local conditions on electoral behavior.

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政府中的绿党是否从自然灾害中获益？野火如何与投票挂钩

本文研究了野火是否与政府中绿色政党得票率的增加有关。我们认为，自然灾害会将气候变化行动提上选民的议事日程，从而影响选举行为。利用 2018 年瑞典强烈野火季节的影响，我们分析了在选举年遭遇野火后投票给绿色执政党的倾向变化。与未受影响的城市相比，绿党在受影响城市的得票率明显高于预期，在全国选举中的总体效应大小约为 1 个百分点，在地方选举中为 1.2 个百分点。考虑到绿党的典型得票率，这些影响是相当大的。与此同时，现任社会民主党似乎因火灾而受到了选举惩罚。这些发现为有关自然灾害和气候舆论以及当地条件对选举行为的影响的文献做出了贡献。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Electoral Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.40

自引率

13.00%

发文量

审稿时长

67 days

期刊介绍： Electoral Studies is an international journal covering all aspects of voting, the central act in the democratic process. Political scientists, economists, sociologists, game theorists, geographers, contemporary historians and lawyers have common, and overlapping, interests in what causes voters to act as they do, and the consequences. Electoral Studies provides a forum for these diverse approaches. It publishes fully refereed papers, both theoretical and empirical, on such topics as relationships between votes and seats, and between election outcomes and politicians reactions; historical, sociological, or geographical correlates of voting behaviour; rational choice analysis of political acts, and critiques of such analyses.