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Abstract

A large literature on economic voting has documented that economic growth is a fundamental source of political stability for governments, increasing the size of the pie that governments can distribute and increasing governments´ chances to become reelected. Although there are strong, though non-trivial, links between economic growth and climate change mitigation, evidence on the electoral effects of governments´ efforts to mitigate climate change is scant and ambiguous. To derive expectations regarding the combined role of economic and climate voting, I elaborate on the material consequences economic growth and climate change mitigation are likely to have for individuals across different social class locations. Using individual-level data from the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2018 and country-level data from various sources, I examine how climate change mitigation performance and economic growth affect electoral support for incumbent parties. The results show that individuals in the lowest income positions react particularly sensitive to economic growth and government ambitions in climate policy, and that these associations are conditional on individuals´ relative position in the income distribution as reflected by changes in income inequality. The results offer a more nuanced understanding regarding the conditions that may grant governments electoral leeway to implement ambitious climate policy and that may allow for decoupling between electoral support for incumbent parties and economic growth in capitalist economies exposed to climate change.