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Recent scholarship asserts the existence of “luxury goods voting” arguing that voters penalize parties associated with post-material issues or those with long-run payoffs during economic downturns. We test this arguments here using data from four election studies in Denmark and Germany that explicitly ask respondents to rate parties on one particular luxury goods issue: protection of the environment. Voters who perceive the economy as weak indeed punish governing parties more severely when they associate them with environmental policies; conversely, a green reputation when the economy is expanding garners left-wing parties higher vote probabilities. Right-wing governing parties fare similarly, benefitting from those who perceive them as green when the economy is hale, albeit only converging to the vote probabilities awarded from voters who see them as less green when the economy sours.
The notion of a broad green backlash is set to dominate this year's European election campaign. Based on new survey data from more than 15.000 respondents in Germany, France and Poland, we show that it is largely overblown. A majority of voters still wish for a more ambitious climate policy and would support a raft of concrete measures to bring down emissions. However, supporting pivotal voters in the middle will require a stronger focus on green investment and industrial policy and offsetting measures for effective but unpopular policies like carbon pricing. Parties should not waste the coming months outbidding each other over how to cater to imagined climate fatigue but compete over concrete recipes to green the economy.