Weather to Protest: The Effect of Black Lives Matter Protests on the 2020 Presidential Election

35 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 2021 Last revised: 11 Oct 2023

See all articles by Bouke Klein Teeselink

Bouke Klein Teeselink

King's College London; Yale School of Management

Georgios Melios

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science; University College London

Date Written: March 22, 2021

Abstract

Do mass mobilizations bring about social change? This paper investigates the impact of the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death on the 2020 presidential election. Using local precipitation as an exogenous source of protest variation, we document a marked shift in support for the Democratic candidate in counties that experienced more protesting activity. We use a spatial two-stage least squares estimator, and show that conventional TSLS estimators overestimate the effect size by a factor three. Ancillary analyses show that the effect cannot be explained by changes in turnout. Instead, protests shifted people’s attitudes about racial disparities.

Keywords: Collective Action, Black Lives Matter, Presidential Elections, Protests, IV

JEL Classification: D72, J15

Suggested Citation

Klein Teeselink, Bouke and Melios, Georgios, Weather to Protest: The Effect of Black Lives Matter Protests on the 2020 Presidential Election (March 22, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3809877 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3809877

Bouke Klein Teeselink (Contact Author)

King's College London ( email )

Strand Building
London
United Kingdom

Yale School of Management ( email )

165 Whitney Ave
New Haven, CT 06511

Georgios Melios

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science ( email )

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55/56 Lincoln's Inn
Fields, London, WC2A 3LJ
United Kingdom

University College London ( email )

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United Kingdom

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