Natural Disasters and Electoral Support for Green Parties - Evidence from the 2021 Flood in Germany
A growing literature studies how natural disasters affect political attitudes towards climate change. In this paper, we examine the electoral effects of major flood that occurred just two months prior to the 2021 German federal election. Using a difference-in-differences design in conjunction with municipal--level voting data, we analyze how local exposure to the flood affected support for the Green Party -- the party most closely associated with policies that address climate change. Our results reveal pronounced differences between the two most affected states. In the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, we find no evidence that the flood affected Green Party support. In the neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, we show that the flood increased the Green Party vote share by more than two percentage points. We then provide additional support for these results through synthetic control analyses of the most heavily affected localities in each state. Our results suggest that incumbency moderates the relationship between extreme weather events and Green Party support.