More Evidence on Terrorism and Elections: The Case of Israel

Last week I blogged about a Spanish study which detailed how the 2004 Madrid bombings were a major factor in helping the socialists topple the ruling conservatives.

Picking up on that thread, a recent Rand study examining attacks in Israel shows more proof that timed terrorist attacks can influence electoral outcomes.

The researchers, Claude Berrebi of Rand and Esteban Klor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, looked at the effect of attacks on Knesset elections in 1988, 1992, 1996, 1999 and 2003.

They found that one terrorism-related death translated into a 0.45 percentage point gain in that locality for the conservatives if the attack occurred within three months of an election; the further away from the elections the attacks occurred, the less influential they were. During the entire period, a typical terrorist attack resulted in three deaths, so one incident meant a 1.35 percent point gain in that locality for the conservatives.

Berrebi and Klor explain how this could turn an election:

Given that the electorate in Israel is closely split between the right and left blocs, the occurrence of a terror attack before an election (or the lack thereof) can clearly determine the electoral outcome. In particular, the average relative support for the right bloc on the elections considered in the time period at issue is in the order of 0.47 percent. Thus, an increase by two on the average number of attacks would be almost enough to decide the elections in favor of the right bloc of political parties in an average locality.

It also didn't matter which ideology was in power, it was the conservatives who always gained. The results were unchanged when the researchers controlled for attributes like the size of the locality or economic conditions in the area.

So, why did the conservatives gain in Israel while they lost out in Spain?

Not surprisingly, voters seem to favor the party they think will do the most to protect them from more incidents. In the case of Spain, the view was that the conservatives put the population in peril by fighting a war that drew the attention of terrorists.

In Israel, the conservatives were perceived to be able to reduce the Palestinian threat, primarily by isolating the Palestinian population away from the Israelis.

The results seem to support the 'policy voting hypothesis', or the idea that voters attach more importance to what political parties say their main concerns are as opposed to a party' performance in relation to those concerns...in other words, it was more important for voters to see that a party made terrorism its top concern.

This all might partially explain some of the dynamics we saw in play during the 2004 U.S. presidential elections. Taking a look at the exit polls, the three most important issues for voters were: moral values (22%), economy/jobs (20%), and terrorism (19%).

Further, 54 percent of voters said that the al Qaeda tape featuring Osama bin Laden released just days before the election played an important part in their vote.

Factor in that the Republicans had the family values issue locked up and that voters trusted Bush to protect the country from terrorism more than Kerry (58% to 40%), it doesn't quite seem like Kerry ever had a chance.

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