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Political Science Seminar Series

Friday, March 21, 2:30-4 p.m.

CSF 1203

Title: Driving Labor Apart: Climate Policy Backlash in the American Auto Corridor

ABSTRACT: What are green industrial policy’s electoral effects? There has been a global resur-

gence in industrial policy on the premise that it sidesteps voter opposition. But we

argue that industrial policy can cause backlash when it has unequal effects within

sectors. Communities that face job threats should vote for politicians who oppose the

energy transition. We leverage disaggregated data to identify counties with jobs at risk from vehicle electrification spurred by industrial policy. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the EV transition increased Republican presidential vote share by 2.5 percentage points in vulnerable counties compared to the matched control group.

Rather than the national union stemming backlash by unifying labor and the left, our interviews show how local unions provided information that reinforced worker fears. Climate reforms with unequal effects undermine industrial policy’s political logic and cut new cleavages between left parties and the working class

Alexander F. Gazmararian is a political scientist at Princeton University. He studies the political economy of climate change. His first book, Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse (Cambridge University Press), was written with Dustin Tingley and published in 2023. He is currently finishing a book, Climate Fault Lines: The Political Geography of a Warming World (Princeton University Press), with Helen V. Milner.

Presented by Department of Political Science

Event Listing 2025-03-21 14:30:00 2025-03-21 16:00:00 America/St_Johns Political Science Seminar Series Title: Driving Labor Apart: Climate Policy Backlash in the American Auto Corridor ABSTRACT: What are green industrial policy’s electoral effects? There has been a global resur- gence in industrial policy on the premise that it sidesteps voter opposition. But we argue that industrial policy can cause backlash when it has unequal effects within sectors. Communities that face job threats should vote for politicians who oppose the energy transition. We leverage disaggregated data to identify counties with jobs at risk from vehicle electrification spurred by industrial policy. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the EV transition increased Republican presidential vote share by 2.5 percentage points in vulnerable counties compared to the matched control group. Rather than the national union stemming backlash by unifying labor and the left, our interviews show how local unions provided information that reinforced worker fears. Climate reforms with unequal effects undermine industrial policy’s political logic and cut new cleavages between left parties and the working class Alexander F. Gazmararian is a political scientist at Princeton University. He studies the political economy of climate change. His first book, Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse (Cambridge University Press), was written with Dustin Tingley and published in 2023. He is currently finishing a book, Climate Fault Lines: The Political Geography of a Warming World (Princeton University Press), with Helen V. Milner. CSF 1203 Department of Political Science