Weather to Protest: The Effect of Black Lives Matter Protests on the 2020 Presidential Election

Bouke Klein Teeselink and Georgios Melios ()

No 22-007, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Do mass mobilizations bring about social change? This paper investigates the impact of the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death on the 2020 presidential election. Using local precipitation as an exogenous source of protest variation, we document a marked shift in support for the Democratic candidate in counties that experienced more protesting activity. We use a spatial two-stage least squares estimator, and show that conventional TSLS estimators overestimate the effect size by a factor three. Ancillary analyses show that the effect cannot be explained by changes in turnout. Instead, protests shifted people’s attitudes about racial disparities.

Keywords: Collective Action; Black Lives Matter; Presidential Elections; Protests; IV (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-soc and nep-ure
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