Natural Hazards, Social Policy, and Electoral Performance: Evidence from the 2017 Earthquake in Mexico City

Abstract

Do large-scale and unexpected events, such as natural disasters, affect elections? This article studies the political dimension of the 19-S earthquake that hit Mexico City in 2017, a few months before the 2018 elections. Using fine-grained geospatial data, the results show that candidates from the city-level incumbent Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) had a small increase in vote share in 2018 compared to the previous election in precincts more exposed to damaged caused by the earthquake (in terms of both distance-based and per capita measures), accounting for the seismic profile and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood. The article shows that the implementation of disaster-recovery policy explains part of this relationship. Moreover, voters were as electorally responsive to a future risk reduction strategy as to a reconstruction credit.

Disasters and corruption: public expectations and tolerance—evidence from Mexico

“…Similar to the 1985 earthquake, the 2017 event also had political consequences: the aftermath—revelations about deep corruption in building code enforcement, as well as the government's poor disaster response—hurt incumbent politicians and parties in the lead‐up to the national elections on 1 July 2018 (Robles and Benton, 2018). Indeed, Martinez‐Alvarez and Rodriguez‐Valadez (2023, p. 321) found the 2017 earthquake to be ‘one of the most politically salient topics in the consequential 2018 election that happened a few months afterward’. Victories for Andrés Manuel López Obrador as President of the Republic and Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo as Head of Government of Mexico City marked a significant leftward ideological shift in Mexican politics.…”