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So says Yusaku Horiuchi, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, the co-author of Why Should the Republicans Pray for Rain? Electoral Consequences of Rainfall Revisited. His paper, published in December, argues that rainfall on election days leads to better results for the GOP, swaying not just turnout but also voters’ decisions in the booth.
“When it rains, people have a bad mood,” Horiuchi said on Friday. “When they have a bad mood, they tend to avoid making risky decisions. They tend to be more risk-averse. Then, in terms of the politics, at least in American politics, the less risky choice is conservative.”
The title is not new, and neither are theories about connections between rainfall and parties’ vote share. In 2007, three researchers published an influential paper called “The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections” that tracked the relationship back through decades of presidential elections.
The paper, written by Brad Gomez of the University of Georgia; Thomas Hansford of the University of California, Merced; and George Krause of the University of Pittsburgh, showed that rainfall decreases turnout all over the United States — and that in those circumstances Democratic voters tend to stay home more often than Republicans.
Through careful statistical analysis and the application of dizzyingly complex economic math, Horiuchi and his collaborator, Woo Chang Kang of Australia National University, have made a significant addition.
Not only are Republicans more likely than Democrats to show up to the polls on a rainy day, their work indicates, but a small portion of all voters — about 1 percent — are also more likely to choose Republican candidates over Democrats.
Horiuchi also brought in behavioral science to bolster a conclusion that the rain’s effect on people’s moods can play into their pick of candidates.
“Inclement weather on the election day could affect voters’ moods and risk-attitudes, which opens the possibility that weather conditions affect voters’ electoral choices as well,” he and Kang wrote in the study.
Area politicians reacted with incredulity to the idea that some Americans’ votes could be blowing with the wind.
”I just think this is hysterical.” Karen Cervantes, a Lebanon resident with the Grafton County Republican Committee, said on Friday. “I think there’s no question that weather influences turnout … but I don’t believe that it influences who you vote for.”
Cervantes and others cited heavy snowstorms around Town Meeting day last year as a damper on turnout. The Lebanon Republican even was willing to blame sunny weather, in some instances, for lulling voters into complacency and keeping them from the polls.
Democrats, too, found the idea of rain-related swing votes difficult to accept.
“My first thought here was, is this a joke?” said state Rep. Ray Gagnon, of Claremont, who added later, “It’s a gloomy day, so you vote for the gloomy party?”
Horiuchi met their skepticism with a good-natured chuckle.
“Of course politicians may say so,” he said of their expressions of doubt, “but the data, at least, shows some patterns.”
During the publication review process for Horiuchi’s paper, some of his academic peers raised questions about his conclusions about voters’ state of mind. The reviewers asked whether the analysis truly was able to measure whether voters’ choices had to do with risk aversion stemming from inclement weather.
Horiuchi said he was certain that rainfall was causing these voting results, rather than merely correlating with them. He and his collaborator also plan to flesh out the mechanism by which voters make their choices in upcoming studies, one of which may take place in Australia, where Kang is based.
Australia has compulsory voting laws, which make for an opportunity to better study the relationship between rainfall and voter choice, Horiuchi said. Weather is less likely to affect turnout when voting is mandatory, he said, meaning that changes to voters’ choices of parties are potentially easier to follow.
Another study planned by Horiuchi likely will use data from online voter surveys taken just after elections. Web-based polls can record when and where respondents answered questions, which could allow researchers to figure out how the weather was when the person voted.
Other scientists have taken weather-related research on decision-making far beyond politics, pointing to effects from inclement weather on the worlds of finance, business and health.
Gagnon, the Democratic state representative from Claremont, still remembers one special election for the N.H. House that took place more than a decade ago.
He woke up on Election Day to a bright morning and thought to himself, “This looks good.” Then a freak March snowstorm blew through the region, he said, “and I lost. I lost the election. I don’t know — maybe there’s some truth to it.”
Come to think of it, Gagnon said, he has been using the weather as an excuse for some time. “I had no idea I was on to something.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.