Voter Responses to Climate Adaptation in High-Risk Communities

As climate impacts intensify, governments increasingly adopt adaptation policies, yet their electoral consequences remain poorly understood. We study electoral effects of moratoria on homeowners insurance nonrenewals in wildfire-exposed areas in California. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find null effects on support for incumbents. To explain, we develop a framework of experience-based accountability for policy responses to persistent risks. We argue that reward depends on perceived sufficiency: voters evaluate the policy relative to the history of local disruption. Consistent with this, we find modest electoral rewards where prior insurance disruption was limited, but none where it was chronic. Survey evidence shows that, before the policy, residents of high-disruption areas held more negative and more settled evaluations of the governor. We offer a framework for the politics of adaptation in which electoral reward depends on perceived sufficiency: whether the intervention is viewed as durable enough to match the persistence of climate risks.