Flooding the vote: Heterogeneous voting responses to a natural disaster in Germany
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Contributors
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.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 102694 |
| Journal | European Journal of Political Economy |
| Volume | 89 |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
| Scopus | 105008830715 |
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| ORCID | /0000-0002-5071-7849/work/210355045 |