'Hurricane scepticism' divided along political lines
Monday, September 14, 2020 - 08:40
in Mathematics & Economics
Florida residents who voted for Trump were between 10% and 11% less likely than Clinton voters to evacuate prior to Hurricane Irma, a category 5 storm that made landfall in September 2017, according to an analysis of anonymized smartphone GPS data based on "pings" from each voting precinct. The findings suggest that partisan conservative media outlets created "hurricane skepticism" before the storm hit, casting doubt on the severity of the hurricane and generating high-stakes divisions in evacuation behavior.