Left behind: Voters’ reactions to local school and hospital closures

Abstract

Voters in rural and peripheral areas have increasingly turned away from mainstream parties and towards right-wing populist parties. This paper tests the extent to which political decisions with adverse local effects—such as school and hospital closures—can explain this electoral shift. I theorize that political decisions such as these substantiate a perception of a disconnect between “ordinary” people and the politicians in power in day-to-day experiences. Using data on 315 school closures and 30 hospital closures in Denmark from 2005 to 2019 in a generalized difference-in-differences design, I find that mayors lose about 1.6 percentage points of the valid votes in areas where they close a school. Furthermore, I find that right-wing populist parties increase their support in both local and national elections when a local school or hospital is closed. These findings provide insight into the electoral consequences of political decisions with adverse local effects and thus contribute to our understanding of the rise of right-wing populism.