Exogenous Crises and Incumbent Governments: A Case Study from Turkey

How do exogenous crises like natural disasters, climate change, weather events, or pandemics affect populist leaders? Several studies have demonstrated that incumbent politicians in democratic settings are likely punished for exogenous shocks they are unable to control; however, other scholars have reached different conclusions in other political contexts such as non-democratic and hybrid regimes. To resolve this puzzle, this study investigates the complex relationship between unexpected natural disasters and incumbent support, focusing on the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and their influence on the elections that took place three months after the earthquake that returned Recep Tayyip Erdogan to presidential office. The analysis of this paper utilizes ordinary least squares regression to explain how the extent of damage in Turkish cities influenced the amount of change in Erdogan’s vote share between 2018 and 2023. I find that Erdogan's vote increased by 0.08 percentage points in response to a one percentage point increase in earthquake severity. Considering the rising threat of climate change, this study's results shed light on how increasing natural disasters may help incumbent populist leaders retain their power in subsequent elections.