It's not easy being green: Why voters punish parties for environmental policies during economic downturns

Abstract

Recent scholarship asserts the existence of “luxury goods voting” arguing that voters penalize parties associated with post-material issues or those with long-run payoffs during economic downturns. We test this arguments here using data from four election studies in Denmark and Germany that explicitly ask respondents to rate parties on one particular luxury goods issue: protection of the environment. Voters who perceive the economy as weak indeed punish governing parties more severely when they associate them with environmental policies; conversely, a green reputation when the economy is expanding garners left-wing parties higher vote probabilities. Right-wing governing parties fare similarly, benefitting from those who perceive them as green when the economy is hale, albeit only converging to the vote probabilities awarded from voters who see them as less green when the economy sours.