Trump supporters less likely to evacuate homes in event of hurricane, study suggests

‘These results support our findings of the Limbaugh-driven emergence of hurricane scepticism’

Supporters of Donald Trump are 11 per cent less likely to evacuate the path of a hurricane after conservative media introduced "hurricane scepticism", according to a new study.  

Researchers found that 34 per cent of Florida residents who likely voted Republican in the 2016 election evacuated their homes ahead of Hurricane Irma in 2017, they said in the paper published in Science Advances on Friday.  

By contrast, of those who likely voted for Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election, 45 per cent were estimated to have evacuated before the September storm.

The team from UCLA looked at patterns of evacuation using GPS location data from 2.7 million smartphones compared with precinct-level results of the 2016 presidential election.

The data allowed researchers to compare the behaviour of likely Clinton or Trump voters living around 500 feet (150 metres) apart.

But that partisan divide was not seen when researchers applied the methodology to Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 or Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.

They hypothesize that the politicization of hurricanes in 2017 led to increased scepticism among consumers of conservative media, pointing to Rush Limbaugh questioning the severity of Irma on 5 September that year.

 "There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it," Mr Limbaugh is quoted in the paper as saying.

"You have people in all of these government areas who believe man is causing climate change, and they’re hell-bent on proving it… these storms, once they actually hit, are never as strong as they’re reported."

Researchers wrote that Mr Limbaugh linked existing scepticism of client science with appeals to ignore official warnings as the Hurricane approached landfall, while evacuating his Palm Beach home three days later.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter echoed the sentiment on 10 September in a still visible tweet, with reporting of the scepticism spreading from there.

Researchers said there were only occasional instances of “hurricane trutherism” on blogs before this, making comparisons before and after Mr Limbaugh's statements a useful study of partisan effects on high-stakes behaviour.

"In the days leading up to Irma's landfall in Florida, we observe that the peak difference in overall evacuations between Clinton and Trump precincts coincides with the peak in Google search trends for 'Rush Limbaugh hurricane'" they wrote.

"Together, these results support our findings of the Limbaugh-driven emergence of hurricane scepticism."