Governors and Electoral Hazard in the Allocation of US Federal Disaster Aid

Public aid in the aftermath of an environmental dissaster may provide elected officials opportunities to engage in “electoral hazard,” where an incumbent can influence the probability of her reelection by allocating aid to influence voters’ expectations of their future welfare.  This is the first test for electoral hazard in the allocation of federal public aid to officials of local governments running for re-election. Using a unique U.S. county-level data set, we estimate the determinants of the equilibrium allocation strategy of an incumbent in the presence of electoral hazard. Controlling for loss and the demographic, economic and political characteristics of at-risk counties, we find the average incumbent governor seeking re-election actively engages in the manipulation of voter expectations by allocating greater shares and magnitudes of the largest federal disaster aid program to those at-risk counties that awarded the incumbent governor a plurality of votes in the preceding election.