Natural disasters are a perennial and increasing feature of democratic societies. These disasters present chances for governments to improve their support through responsive governance or else be held accountable for failures of crisis leadership. Scholars seek to understand under what conditions voters will ‘rally around the flag’ or punish incumbents. 

However, whether natural hazards like fires, floods, droughts and cyclones have differentiated effects on support for parties of left and right remains understudied. Further, studies which examine these effects longitudinally in between elections and taking into account national party leader popularity are lacking. In this paper we draw upon a novel database of 2610 Australian federal opinion polls matched to records of major disasters from 1985-2025 to answer the questions: (1) How do natural hazards impact upon satisfaction with the governing party and leader? (2) Does this effect vary across parties and time and (3) if so, what explains these differences?

We find that different natural disasters impact upon parties of left and right, and that these impacts have more of an impact upon the leader than their party. Our findings point to the importance of better understanding the relationship between natural hazards and the broader political systems they impact upon.

Dr Petter’s research focuses on representative democracy and responsiveness with a particular focus on Members of Parliament (MPs) in Westminster jurisdictions as well as Queensland state politics. He has published articles in international journals on the ways MPs and parties try to connect meaningfully with the public as well as on the policy and political implications of the Antipodean idea of the ‘fair go’ in topics like Prime Ministerial rhetoric and housing policy.

Currently he’s working on an ARC funded project on Federal politics looking at the drivers of government popularity and politicians’ responses to their waxing and waning political fortunes.

He has provided media commentary and expertise on Queensland focused federal, state and local government issues for television for the ABC and Channel Seven, radio interviews for ABC RN, ABC News and Triple-M in Queensland and in online and print news such as the Guardian Australia, Gold Coast Bulletin, Brisbane Times and ABC online.