Terrorism, Voting Behavior, and Political Attitudes

This chapter covers the current state of knowledge on the relationship between terrorism and voter’s preferences and political attitudes. Theoretical models deliver very often ambiguous predictions since, on the one hand, voters may want to punish incumbents for their lack of competence in preventing terrorist attacks but, on the other hand, the “rally-around-the-flag” effect can benefit them. The empirical evidence shows that terrorist attacks change the political preferences of voters and the result of elections. Terrorist attacks usually increase the participation of voters and, in general, the support for right-wing parties since they are perceived by the population as stronger against terrorism than left-wing parties. The effect is stronger the closer is the terrorist attack to the data of the election. Despite these improvements in our knowledge on the empirical relationship between terrorism and political attitudes, there is a need to move to more credible empirical methodologies using natural experiments or agent-based models.