Motivated to vote? The effect of flooding on political participation

Abstract

This paper investigates changes in political participation following a disaster. Drawing from the electoral results and flood declarations following the 2010 flood in Slovakia, we constructed a dataset that illustrates when and how often each municipality was affected by disastrous conditions before the elections. The analysis revealed that experiencing a flood significantly increased the level of political participation in a municipality. However, the effect of flooding on elections is conditional. First, significantly higher turnout occurs only when a flood affects the municipality on election day. Second, repeated flooding before the elections does not change the overall participation rate. In contrast, it is the one‐time, continuous extreme weather event that most mobilises voters. Third, only severely affected municipalities showed a significant turnout effect. Last, the timing variable is crucial in determining the impact of repetition and severity. This paper distinguishes between different kinds of flood events that can impact disaster behaviour.