Playing with fire: do forest fires ignite green votes in Brazil?

This research studies the relation between forest fires and green voting patterns in Brazil, focusing on whether increased forest fire frequency influences votes for the greenest candidates in gubernatorial elections. With extreme-climate events more salient and recurrent, it is important to understand their political impacts, especially in developing nations. Drawing on data from 1998 to 2022, the study employs a panel data fixed effects regression model to analyze the correlation between these fires and the share of green votes whilst controlling for socioeconomic and agricultural factors. The results reveal a counterintuitive weak negative correlation between the increase of forest fires and votes for the greenest candidate. Additionally, Agricultural GDP demonstrated a positive association with green votes, suggesting a complex dynamic in fire-recurrent areas. Other control variables were not statistically significant (Vegetal Production, Education Level, GDP per capita). These results challenge prior research that links extreme climate events to an increase in the support for green politics, highlighting cultural and structural factors specific to Brazil, suggesting that forest fires are perceived differently when compared to different climate events. The study stresses the need for focused analyses of environmental voting and further research to unravel these complex relationships in the Brazilian context.