EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS AND ELECTORAL OUTCOMES A difference-in-differences analysis

Abstract

Due to anthropogenic climate change, extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, temperature extremes, storms or wildfires will increase in severity and frequency. While the most obvious consequences of extreme weather events are material and human damages, there is also a growing body of literature on the societal and political implications of such events. A strand of this literature has found that particularly extreme weather events of a large scale which occur shortly before elections significantly influence electoral outcomes. However, within this growing body of literature, there are so far only few insights into sub-national elections, medium-sized extreme weather events and the effect of such events on the electoral outcomes of fringe parties. This Master’s thesis addresses these gaps by conducting a difference-indifferences analysis of a sub-national election following a medium-sized flood in Germany. The analysis finds that voters in state-level elections are attentive to national- and state-level responses to an extreme weather event, but do not consistently reward or punish politicians at the correct level of government. In addition, the analysis shows that extreme weather events increase the vote share of fringe parties. Overall, the results of this Master's thesis demonstrate that not just large-scale but also medium-sized extreme weather events constitute an increasingly important explanatory factor for electoral outcomes.