Replication Data for: \"If not now, when? Climate disaster and the Green vote following the 2021 Germany Floods\"

Can first-hand experience of a climate-related natural disaster make citizens more likely to vote in favour of progressive climate politics? Leveraging the rare occurrence of a large-scale disaster just two months before a federal election, we use a difference-in-differences design to study the short-term electoral effects of the devastating 2021 Germany Floods on voter support for Germany’s major environmentalist party, the Green Party. Compared to other German voters, those living in areas affected by the floods were marginally (0.4 - 1.6 percentage points) more likely to vote for the Greens. The largest increases in Green vote share are observed in municipalities which were directly exposed to flooding. Contrary to expectation, we tend to find larger increases in Green Party support in the less severely affected areas. Despite substantial increases in turnout in affected areas, we find that the observed increase in vote share for the Greens was rather driven by a persuasion effect on voters who previously supported other parties. In the absence of evidence that the floods led to an increase in voters’ issue prioritisation of climate change, our results highlight the limited possibility for major natural disasters to induce increased localised support for Green parties.

亲历气候相关自然灾害，是否会促使公民更倾向于投票支持进步型气候政治举措？本研究借助联邦选举前两个月罕见爆发的大规模灾害事件，采用双重差分法（Difference-in-Differences），探究2021年德国灾难性洪灾对德国主流环保政党——绿党（Green Party）选民支持率的短期选举效应。相较于其他德国选民，受灾地区选民支持绿党的比例仅小幅提升（0.4至1.6个百分点）。绿党得票率涨幅最大的群体为直接遭受洪灾影响的市镇居民。与预期相悖的是，受灾程度较轻的区域，绿党支持率的涨幅反而更为显著。尽管受灾地区的投票率大幅攀升，但研究发现，绿党得票率的提升主要源于对此前支持其他政党的选民产生的说服效应。现有证据未表明洪灾促使选民将气候变化议题置于更高优先级，因此本研究结果凸显了大型自然灾害在提升地方民众对绿党的支持率方面，其作用空间较为有限。