Party leaders and voter responses to political terrorism

Benny Geys,Øystein Hernæs

doi:10.1007/s11127-020-00789-3

Abstract

In this article, we study the political implications of terrorism rooted in extremist political ideologies. Our data uniquely allow studying the potential role of party leader evaluations on political outcomes, including voter turnout and vote choice. To strengthen causal identification, we combine an event-study framework with the fact that Norwegians were affected personally to differing degrees by the 22 July 2011 terror attack because of variation in the victims’ municipalities of residence. Our main findings suggest that extreme right-wing terrorism influences party vote intentions and evaluations of political leaders strongly in the short run, as well as party choice in actual elections in the longer run. We document shifts within Norway’s left-right political blocs rather than shifts between those blocs frequently observed following religious/separatist violence.

Highlights

The effects may in part be driven by changes in voter turnout as, in line with expectations from political mobilization theories and earlier findings by Robbins et al (2013), we find a statistically significant effect of terrorism on voter turnout
Our analysis evaluated the political implications of a terrorist act motivated by an extreme political ideology
Inspired by the rising personalization of party politics (McAllister 2016), we thereby push the literature by evaluating the extent to which party leader assessments can provide a potential mechanism underlying public responses in terms of both opinion polls and voting outcomes

Summary

Introduction

Terrorism—commonly defined as “the premeditated use, or threat to use, violence by individuals or subnationals to obtain political or social objectives through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims” (Enders and Sanders 2012, p. 4)— can have important socio-economic consequences, as well as affecting micro-level attitudes and public opinion (Berrebi and Klor 2008; Finseraas and Listhaug 2013; Merolla and Zechmeister 2013; Getmansky and Zeitzoff 2014; Peffley et al 2015; Hirsch-Hoefler et al 2016). Consistent with growing personalization of party politics, the observed changes in leader evaluations mirror the stronger (weaker) voter support for the Labour (Progress) Party in the aftermath of the attacks as well as the weaker (stronger) voter support for other left-wing (center-right) parties Those results indicate an important role for party leader evaluations in individual voters’ responses to terrorist events, likely occurring from a combination of leaders themselves shaping voters’ reactions as well as playing into and being shaped by those reactions. Our analysis differs from that body of work in terms of its research questions (i.e., the focus on party leadership and political outcomes), empirical approach (i.e., exploitation of victims’ geographical locations and the combination of short- and longer-term impacts) and datasets (using both novel survey data and actual election results). Party, which limits potential concerns that the distribution of victims merely reflects the electoral strength of the Labour Party (we return to that issue below)

Empirical approach and identification strategy

Results

Two voting experiments took place during the 2011 elections

Conclusion