Tilting at windmills? Electoral repercussions of wind turbine projects in Minnesota

Highlights: • Wind turbine development has a positive impact on incumbents' electoral performance. • Both Republican and Democratic incumbents benefit electorally from wind development. • GIS turbine data is merged with voting and census data at the precinct level. • In Minnesota being supportive of wind infrastructure is a winning political strategy. Spatial electoral repercussions of wind turbine developments are surprisingly understudied in the literature. How people vote based on the personal costs and benefits of living in the vicinity of wind turbines is an important empirical question that can improve our understanding about the political feasibility of a clean energy transition. Given the assumption that any potential nuisances or benefits associated with wind turbines are likely to be highly spatially concentrated, we merge the GIS turbine data with voting and census data at the precinct level to examine how wind turbine development affects the electoral fortunes of incumbent state legislators in the state of Minnesota in elections that occurred between 2006 and 2018. We also examine whether the incumbency advantage of turbine development favors Republicans or Democrats more. We find that turbine development has a positive impact on incumbent performance. In precincts where wind turbines are constructed, our models estimate that adding at least one turbine within that precinct increases the share of the incumbent party's vote in the next election by an average of 1.8–9 percentage points. We also find that Republicans benefit electorally from turbine development as much as or more than Democrats. The finding that voters usually reward rather than punish local politicians in both parties for wind development bodes well for the future of energy transition in the US as it suggests that most people are supportive of green energy even in their backyards.