Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Do natural disasters help or hurt politicians’ electoral fortunes? Research on this question has produced conflicting results. Achen and Bartels (2002, 2016) find that voters punish incumbent politicians indiscriminately after such disasters. Other studies find that voters incorporate the quality of relief efforts by elected officials. We argue that results in this literature may be driven, in part, by a focus on contemporary cases of disaster and relief. In contrast, we study a case of catastrophic flooding in the American South in 1927, in which disaster aid was broadly and fairly distributed and Herbert Hoover (the 1928 Republican presidential candidate) was personally responsible for overseeing the relief efforts. Despite the distribution of unprecedented levels of disaster aid, we find that voters punished Hoover at the polls: in affected counties, Hoover’s vote share decreased by more than 10 percentage points. Our results are robust to the use of synthetic control methods and suggest that—even if voters distinguish between low- and high-quality responses—the aggregate effect of this disaster remains broadly negative. Our findings provide some support for Achen and Bartels’ idea of blind retrospection, but also generate questions about the precise mechanisms by which damage and relief affect vote choice.

The political dynamics of voter retrospection and disaster responses

“… Achen and Bartels (2004) Arceneaux and Stein (2006) Cole, Healy, and Werker (2012) Bodet, Thomas, and Tessier (2016) Heersink, Peterson, and Jenkins (2017)…”

Cash transfers' effect on government support: the case of Fiji

“…Following the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood, votes for incumbent politicians dropped by 10 percentage points in counties that experienced extensive relief efforts (Heersink et al, 2017). Following the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood, votes for incumbent politicians dropped by 10 percentage points in counties that experienced extensive relief efforts (Heersink et al, 2017).…”

“…More recent evidence has displaced the 'attentive citizen' theory, suggesting that the distribution of disaster aid may not benefit, or may negatively affect, governments. Following the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood, votes for incumbent politicians dropped by 10 percentage points in counties that experienced extensive relief efforts (Heersink et al, 2017). Similarly, in the 2004 summer hurricane season in Florida, voter turnout was lower among households that received aid from incumbent politicians (Chen, 2013).…”

“…On the one hand, the 'attentive citizen' theory contends that beneficiaries can react rationally in the wake of a natural hazard and ensuing disaster by inferring government competence or redistributive preferences from its response (Drazen and Eslava, 2010;Lazarev et al, 2014). On the other, solid evidence indicates that even among governments that have distributed disaster aid effectively, the impacts on government support are sometimes inexistent or negative (Larreguy et al, 2015;Heersink et al, 2017;Blattman et al, 2018).…”

Irrelevant Events and Voting Behavior: Replications Using Principles from Open Science

“…It is fair to characterize the observational empirical literature on irrelevant events as a "mess." 7 Several studies suggest that irrelevant events like natural disasters (Achen and Bartels 2016;Heersink, Peterson, and Jenkins 2017), sporting events (Healy,Malhotra,and 5 This research agenda has been highly influential. As of 3/15/2019, Achen and Bartels (2016) has already been cited 660 times according to Google Scholar, and working paper versions of previous chapters have been cited 465 times (Achen and Bartels 2004a;2012) and 185 times (Achen and Bartels 2004b).…”