Erik Herron
West Virginia University, WV·Social Science
When a natural disaster hits right before an election, can people still vote, and do they still trust the result? Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina in late September 2024, weeks before the presidential election.
- Fields
Social Science
- Topics
election administration
Hurricane Helene
natural disasters
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Measure how Hurricane Helene's damage to roads, power and communications affected North Carolina's capacity to run the 2024 election, using interviews with state and local election officials and records of polling place changes.
- Assess how disaster-related disruptions shaped voter participation, using post-election surveys of residents and exit polls at early voting sites and election-day polling places.
- Test how the state's administrative responses influenced public perceptions of election integrity, by linking survey and exit poll responses to administrative data and official election results.
More about the research
It damaged power, water, cell service and roads, and it displaced residents. North Carolina was a key battleground state, so the storm raised two questions. How would the disaster affect the state's ability to run the election? And how would the state's response shape whether people saw the election as fair and valid? Failures to provide voting services, or even the belief that services were lacking, could weaken confidence in the outcome.
Why it matters
Disasters are likely to keep disrupting elections. Evidence on how North Carolina officials adapted after Hurricane Helene, and how voters responded, could help election administrators and emergency managers plan for future crises. That could protect voter access and public confidence in results when infrastructure fails.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lorrie Frasure
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Social Science
Field a post-2024-election online survey of about 22,000 U.S. adults, including registered and unregistered voters and non-citizens, offered in up to ten languages, to measure political inclusion, participation and policy support.
Nicholas Valentino
University of Michigan, MI·Social Science
Field pre- and post-election interviews for the American National Election Studies and add a 2026 wave to its first-ever ten-year panel, which follows the same respondents over time.
Sara Mitchell
University of Iowa, IA·Social Science
Build and release a global dataset of government policy responses to natural disasters for all countries from 1900 to 2020.
The school
West Virginia University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $259M a year on research, 201 research doctorates a year.
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