Could this year’s October surprise — the unexpected event that shifts a presidential race in its final weeks — be natural disasters? Hurricanes Helene and Milton and associated tornados and rain could have major political implications, especially in the affected states but also for the United States as a whole, especially given that voting isn’t compulsory.
As it ripped through Florida and the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, Hurricane Helene became the deadliest North American hurricane since Katrina in 2005. Hurricane Milton followed, sweeping across much the same areas Helena had wrecked just days before. Many have been killed and millions displaced. Homes, businesses and livelihoods have been destroyed; key infrastructure and services — roads and transport, schools, water, electricity, mail, internet — are out of action.
History gives some indication of the impact these disasters, and the partisan responses, will have on voters’ decisions.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 created staggering problems for state and local elections in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, reports a paper from the Congressional Research Services. A year after Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, more than half of the city’s residents had not returned in time for the city’s mayoral primary. Turnout was most affected in the hardest-hit areas, which were disproportionately poor and Black, and clearly advantaged Republicans. The federal response to Katrina, widely perceived as a politicised failure, badly damaged president George W. Bush, a fact he acknowledged in his 2010 memoir Decision Points.
Hurricane Sandy slammed into the eastern seaboard, particularly parts of New Jersey and New York, just a week before the 2012 presidential election. Republican senator Mitt Romney was looking to unseat president Barack Obama, but among those who praised Obama’s response to the storm was New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie, a strong Romney supporter who had been a vocal critic of Obama. A photo of Christie and Obama shaking hands as the president arrived in New Jersey to survey the hurricane damage was later used against Christie in his 2016 run to be the Republican presidential candidate.
Hurricane Michael hit Florida’s panhandle in October 2018, just ahead of the midterm elections. A study concluded confusion about the consolidation of polling places contributed to a drop in voter turnout. Not surprisingly, and not only in this case, disaster-affected people have so many immediate concerns that investigating how to vote becomes too difficult — a barrier compounded when officials have little time to deal with voting procedures, voting machines and voting places.
Further hampering the federal government’s response to the latest hurricanes has been greater politicisation and misinformation. Republicans are seeking to use the disasters as a political tool against Kamala Harris and the Democrats. In the forefront are Donald Trump, his vice-presidential running mate J.D. Vance and Republican lawmakers who have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, funds are being used to help illegal immigrants rather than hurricane victims and that president Joe Biden’s administration is ignoring states’ requests for assistance.
Trump’s dissemination of these untruths is made even more egregious by the fact that he played the very games he is accusing Biden and Harris of. As president he repeatedly hesitated to help areas he considered politically hostile and ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.
This time round, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis —whose response to major hurricanes in 2022 is credited with helping him win a second term — was playing politics even before Hurricane Milton landed. He refused to take Harris’ calls about hurricane relief, although he has spoken to Biden.
Along with the search for missing people, the distribution of emergency aid and the cleanup, the affected states are making efforts to ensure that people can vote. North Carolina, a battleground state with a Democratic governor, has already introduced emergency measures: early voting will start on 17 October, as planned, although there are fears that disruption to the US Postal Service’s operations could prevent people from receiving their mail-in ballots.
In another battleground state, Georgia, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger — who famously stood up to Trump when he sought to thwart the 2020 election results — is readying back-up plans to deliver absentee ballots and ensure that voting locations are functional, voting machines are undamaged, the election is held fairly, and election workers are not subject to threats. With Republicans preparing to contest the results in that state, the ability of all Georgians to vote is imperative.
Even DeSantis, in Florida, has signed an executive order giving election officials in affected counties greater flexibility in administering early and absentee voting.
The key question, of course, is what these voting conditions mean for the election outcome. The affected states are all crucial to the tight presidential race and even slight shifts in turnout or voting patterns could change the result. Trump’s intensified barrage of lies might well reflect Republican concerns that the latest weather events have been disproportionately felt in Republican-leaning areas.
Trump leads by two points in Georgia and less than one in North Carolina, according to the Washington Post’s polling averages. Together these states account for more than a third of the electoral votes in the seven key swing states. Florida — Trump’s home state — leans Republican; if the Harris wins there, gaining thirty electoral college votes, she will almost certainly win the presidency. Some pollsters consider Florida to be in play; even a minor shift in voting numbers or intentions could make it so.
Aside from the delivery of voting papers, access to polling stations and a fair and efficient count, the key factor in hurricane-affected areas will be voters’ perceptions of the adequacy of the Biden administration’s assistance and the contrast with what Trump would deliver. Will voters recognise and respond to Harris’s competence and compassion? With neither Trump nor Vance showing much empathy for hurricane victims (“You’ll be okay,” Trump said, even as hurricane deaths were being reported), many could agree with Biden: “Former President Trump, get a life man. Help these people!”
For the moment, FEMA is reported to have adequate funding to deliver aid, but when or if that runs out there will be problems. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing Biden’s pleas to bring back Congress — currently in recess as members campaign — to pass a bill increasing disaster assistance. Democrats are reminding voters that many of the same Republican lawmakers who are demanding federal aid for their districts voted against the most recent authorisation of funds for FEMA. They are also pointing to the extremist Project 2025’s proposal that a Trump administration commercialise government weather forecasting and drastically scale back FEMA’s responsibilities.
It will be interesting to see if recent extreme weather events bring climate change to the fore as an issue for voters elsewhere in the United States. A recent Gallup poll had climate change well down the list of voter concerns, with just half of those polled rating it as extremely or very important. Trump dismisses climate change; Harris calls it a “global challenge.” Make America Great Again conspiracists, meanwhile, are promulgating theories that the recent hurricanes were engineered to help Democrats in next month’s election. •
