SALON

Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 6:00 PM UTC

How weather affects elections

What history and political science tells us may happen next week after Sandy

By

Topics: Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Hurricanes, Weather, Election 2012, Hurricane Sandy,

How weather affects electionsRepublican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds bags of food as he participates in a campaign event collecting supplies from residents local relief organizations for victims of superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, at the James S. Trent Arena in Kettering, Ohio. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)(Credit: AP)

Even though most Americans probably have no idea who he is, Michael Bilandic’s name is uttered like a curse in major city halls across the country when a big storm looms. Bilandic assumed Chicago’s mayorship after longtime Mayor Richard Daley died of a stroke in 1976, but he lost the job three years later thanks to a snow storm. After Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast just a week before the election, Bilandic’s saga should serve as a warning and lesson to President Obama, along with governors and mayors whose constituents were in the storm’s path.

In January 1979, a massive blizzard dropped almost 20 inches of snow on Chicago, but it was the Bilandic administration’s response that crippled life in the city for weeks afterward and cost him his job. The errors were numerous and devastating. The mayor told people to move their cars off city streets and into parking lots, but when most were closed or unplowed, residents racked up stacks of parking tickets as the city kept enforcing its crackdown. Before that, the transit agency shut down stations in black neighborhoods, so stranded residents watched as trains full of whites sped out to the suburbs (where they don’t vote for the mayor). And to top it off, Bilandic gave a speech “equating the rebellious citizenry with the Romans who killed Christ or the Nazis who killed Jews,” as Chicago Tribune columnist William Griffin wrote in a front page story.

At the end of February, Bilandic lost the Democratic primary — the only election that matters in the Chicago mayoral race — to Jane Byrne. “In the end, God sent us 100 inches of snow in subzero weather, and I happened to lose the election because of it,” he told told Chicago Magazine in 2000.“The snow just proved what everyone had already come to know and see with their own eyes: that the system wasn’t working anymore,” Byrne added. By all accounts, Obama has done an able job handling the hurricane — Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Chrisitie called Obama’s performance “outstanding” —  and he probably won’t call Americans Nazis any time soon, but the Bilandic story nonetheless underscores the stakes at hand.

And the evidence is more than just anecdotal. In research flagged by Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer, political scientists Andrew Reeves and John Gasper found that voters “punish both governors and presidents for damage caused by natural disasters.” At the same time, voters reward effective response to disasters. This is why presidents and governors work so hard to appear in control of the situation and put themselves front and center (Obama addressed the nation this morning on the hurricane, for instance). Meanwhile, political scientist Larry Bartels and Christopher Achen found that climatic events like droughts and floods in the months preceding an election can affect the outcome. They estimated that Al Gore lost 2.8 million votes to George W. Bush in certain states affected by drought or excessive rain.

But the biggest impact weather may have on the election might not be seen until Election Day itself. It’s conventional wisdom among pundits and strategists that bad weather can depress turnout, but it turns out to be very true. A 2007 study from political scientists Brad Gomez, Thomas Hansford and George Krause looked at the weather on Election Day in over 3,000 counties for the 14 presidential elections going back to 1948. They found that every inch of rain depresses turnout by just under 1 percent, and that depressed turnout tends to favor Republicans. With this massive data set of 43,000 cases, they were able to game out some counterfactuals of how elections would have gone if the weather had been different. In only two cases would it have changed the outcome, according to their models. 1960 was a very dry election, helping John F. Kennedy get enough Democrats to the polls to eke out a win. But 2000 was an unusually wet election, especially in parts of Florida. “If it had been a totally dry day in Florida, Gore would have won,” Hansford told Salon. Of course, there a lot of things this could be said for, Hansford quickly noted, from butterfly ballots to potential voter suppression.

Asked about how the hurricane might affect the election, Hansford said it was impossible to say. “I’m unaware of any kind of major event like this occurring this close to Election Day … Certainly don’t have instances of it in our data, which go back to 1948,” he said.

Alex Seitz-Wald

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid
2934 points2935 points | 1512 comments
vote
Anyone Regret Slashing National Weather Service Budget Now?: With GOP-backed cuts to forecasting agency, experts warn future storms will go undetected and more lives lost
893 points894 points | 441 comments
vote
Oklahoma senator wants to offset tornado aid with other cuts
134 points135 points | 42 comments
vote
Horrifying new trend: Posting rapes to Facebook " In Chicago this weekend, prosecutors announced three teenaged boys will tried as adults for aggravated criminal sexual assault after allegedly raping a 12-year-old girl — and posting a video of the attack on Facebook."
22 points23 points | 13 comments
vote
Recent scandals are Whitewater redux, not Watergate
18 points19 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations