Can weather swing an election?

Photo: flickr/hjlIt's pretty obvious that weather can affect overall voter turnout; many people just don't want to go out in the rain, even if it's to exercise their civic duty. But does weather affect some political parties more than others? Are right-wing voters more likely to skip the polls on a rainy day? Do Democrats forget to vote when the surf's up? Well, not many people go surfing in the Netherlands, but they do have elections and weather, and this study describes the relationship between the two.Weather conditions and political party vote share in Dutch national parliament elections, 1971-2010. "Inclement weather on election day is widely seen to benefit certain political parties at the expense of others. Empirical evidence for this weather-vote share hypothesis is sparse however. We examine the effects of rainfall and temperature on share of the votes of eight political parties that participated in 13 national parliament ...