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Weather, Risk, and Voting: An Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Weather on Vote Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2018

Anna Bassi
Anna Bassi*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA, e-mail: anna.bassi@unc.edu
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Abstract

A number of theoretical and empirical studies analyze the effect of inclement weather on voter turnout and in turn on parties’ vote share. However, empirical findings suggest that the effect of weather on parties’ vote share is greater than can be explained by its influence on voter turnout alone. This article provides experimental evidence of the effect of weather on vote choice between more- versus less-risky candidates. Findings show that bad weather significantly and sizeably depresses risk tolerance making voters less likely to vote for risky candidates. This article also provides evidence of a possible mechanism: unpleasant weather conditions depress agents’ mood, making agents less inclined to vote for candidates who are perceived as more risky.

Keywords

weatherrisk attitudesvoting choicemood
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 17 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper has previously circulated as “The indian rain dance of the incumbent. The effect of weather beyond turnout.” I am grateful to Daniel Butler, Riccardo Colacito, Paolo Fulghieri, Andrew Healy, Luke Keele, Neil Malhotra, Dan Myers, Michael MacKuen, Torrey Shineman, Dave Siegel, Jim Stimson, Alex Theodoridis, Agnieszka Tymula, Jon Woon, the editors Eric Dickson and Rick Wilson, and three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. I would like to thank the seminar’s participants at the 2012 Midwest Political Science Association, 2013 Southern Political Science Association, 2013 American Political Science Association, 2013 Economic Science Association, the 6th Annual NYU-CESS Experimental Political Science Conference, and the 2014 Behavioral Models of Politics Conference for providing valuable feedback. All errors remain my own. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at doi:10.7910/DVN/CVXOOS (Bassi, 2018). The experiment was approved by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institutional Review Board (Study #11-0389).

References

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CVXOOS
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