Come hell or high water: An investigation of the effects of a natural disaster on a local election |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Political Science, Université Laval, 2325 Rue de l''Université, Quebec City, G1V 0A6, Canada;2. Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary, T2N 1N4, Canada;1. Rice University, USA;2. Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey;1. Universidade de Brasília, IPOL Campus Darcy Ribeiro Asa Norte, Brasília, DF, Brazil;2. University of Texas-Austin, 158 W 21st St Stop A1800, Austin, TX 78712-1704, USA;1. Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, 347 Smith Hall, Newark, DE 19716, United States;2. Department of Political Science, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, United States;1. People''s Friendship University of Russia, 117198, Moscow Miklukho-Maklaya str. 6, Moscow, Russia;2. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 365 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 26514, USA;1. Department of Sociology and Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3BH, UK;2. Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, USA |
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| Abstract: | How is electoral support for incumbent candidates shaped by natural disasters? Do voters in districts newly recovering from a national disaster punish or reward incumbents for their response to the disaster when compared to their counterparts in unaffected districts? The City of Calgary is used here as a case study. On 20 June 2013, the Bow and Elbow rivers flooded in the Calgary, devastating 26 neighborhoods and displacing approximately 75,000 people, or 7 per cent of the city's population. Four months later, a municipal election was held. When analyzed as a natural experiment, results suggest that support for the incumbent mayor increased city-wide between the 2010 and the 2013 elections, but at a lower rate in areas that experienced residential flooding. However, the flood did not produce equivalent treatment and control groups, as flooded areas differ systematically from areas that were not flooded in ways key to the election outcome. When analyzed more conservatively, results show that the flood had no effect on incumbent support or voter turnout. Thus, this disaster introduces a note of caution into the literature examining the effects of natural disasters on electoral behavior. |
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| Keywords: | Election Incumbency Natural experiment Natural disasters Retrospective voting Turnout |
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