The electoral consequences of environmental accidents: Evidence from Chernobyl

This paper examines the relationship between environmental accidents and voting. Following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, environmentalist parties entered parliaments in several nations. This paper uses Chernobyl as a natural experiment creating variation in radioactive fallout exposure over Sweden. I match municipality level data on cesium ground contamination with election results for the environmentalist Green Party, which was elected to parliament in 1988. After adjusting for pre-Chernobyl views on nuclear power, the results show that voters in high-fallout areas were more likely to vote for the Greens. Detailed individual-level survey data suggests that resistance to nuclear energy increased in fallout-effected areas after the accident, and that this change was driven by voters who followed local media closely.

Automated summary

This paper examines the relationship between environmental accidents and voting. It uses the Chernobyl disaster as a natural experiment to study the variation in radioactive fallout exposure in Sweden. The results show that voters in high-fallout areas were more likely to vote for the environmentalist Green Party, and this change in voting behavior was driven by voters who closely followed local media.