Does weather really affect voter participation? 🗳️

Weather can play an important role in many things. According to a 2008 study, this includes voter participation in presidential elections.

Since then, popular options have become early voting, voting by mail, absentee voting, etc. In 2020, the North Carolina State Board of Elections reported that 65% of voters did so early.

Although I am far from a political analyst, I found the election weather research interesting.

The study claims that inclement weather has a “statistically significant but sometimes significant” effect on voter participation.

What did the study find?

This shows that rain reduces overall voter participation by 1% per inch. For snow this reduction is 0.5%.

He adds that voters are accustomed to weather typical of their region. Obviously, in Raleigh, North Carolina, snow will have a drastic effect on voter participation, unlike a place like Missoula, Montana.

The study also modeled how inclement weather could affect the two-party system.

It claims that bad weather is “positively associated” with the Republican Party. For every inch of rain above normal, the Republican vote increased by 2.5%. That number was lowered to 0.6% for every inch of snow above normal.

How Inclement Weather Affects the Republican and Democratic Parties

According to this model, the study argues that a clean election would have favored Bill Clinton in the 1992 North Carolina elections and Al Gore in the 2000 Florida elections.

Election Day Weather in the Triangle

Weather data has been stored in the RDU since May 1944. Since then, seven of the 20 presidential elections have had rain. Temperatures average in the 60s during the day and in the low 40s during the morning.