Natural Disasters and Green Party Support

A growing literature shows that extreme weather can induce pro-environment attitudes. We examine the political effects of a severe flood shortly before the 2021 German federal election. Drawing on about 600,000 survey responses and electoral data, we assess how flooding affected (i) the perceived salience of climate change, (ii) self-reported Green Party support, and (iii) Green Party voting in federal elections. We find that even severe local flooding had little to no effect on these outcomes. Additional evidence supports two mechanisms underlying this finding: nationwide rather than local effects of severe disasters and voter demands for disaster relief rather than climate change prevention. We test the former mechanism using a regression discontinuity design and find that the flood increased nationwide Green Party support, although this effect persists for only two weeks. Our results shed new light on the precise duration and geographic scope of the political effects of natural disasters.