Republican Support and Economic Hardship

The paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar establishes a causal connection between two of the most salient social developments in the United States over the past decades: the opioid epidemic and the rise in partisanship and polarization. Drawing on unsealed records from litigation against Purdue Pharma, the authors uncover rich geographic variation in the marketing of prescription opioids that serves as a quasi-exogenous source of exposure to the epidemic. They use this variation to document significant increases in opioid-related mortality and greater reliance on public transfer programs. This induced economic hardship led to substantial changes in the political landscape of those communities most affected by the opioid epidemic. The authors estimate that from the mid-2000s to 2020, exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in House, presidential, and gubernatorial elections. By the 2020 House elections, a one-standard-deviation increase in their measure of exposure led to a 4.6 percentage point increase in the Republican vote share. This higher vote share in the House translated into Republicans winning additional seats from 2012 until 2020. This shift towards the Republican Party is explained by changes in voter views rather than in the composition of the electorate.