Flooding the vote: Heterogeneous voting responses to a natural disaster in Germany

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

European Journal of Political Economy

Publication Date

9-1-2025

Abstract

We present the first evidence of voter-level responses to a climatic disaster — the catastrophic German flooding of 2021, which serves as a natural experiment. Data on previous voting history reveals non-monotonic treatment effects: flood exposure increased the likelihood of voting for the Green Party by four to five percentage points among previous non-Green voters, but decreased future Green voting for previous Green voters. Tracking migration also reveals heterogeneity. Movers-out of flood zones responded more strongly; classifying them in the control group – as geographic panels do – attenuates the treatment effect. Both factors rationalize past findings of null or small effects, emphasizing the importance of microdata.

ISSN

0176-2680

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Volume

89

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Climate change, Elections, Green parties, Natural disasters, Voting

Scopus ID

105008830715

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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