last week hurricane Milton hit Florida's Central West Coast leaving behind a path of Devastation that claimed the lives of at least 16 people and left over three million without power the Category 3 hurricane is estimated to have caused up to almost $50 billion doll in property damage and of course that came just after the category 4 hurricane Helen which left at least 230 people dead across North Carolina Georgia South Carolina Florida Tennessee and Virginia the back toback storms are human tragedy and also now a political talking point and so Nathaniel as we've discussed election season
and hurricane season do Collide and so we have plenty of examples actually of hurricanes becoming political talking points in the past is it clear how the hurricane response or the Hurricanes themselves are shaping voter opinion at the moment at the moment no because a it's early especially with regard to Milton which just hit last week and I don't believe we have any polls of Florida since then which obviously is relevant and there's no good way to pull Florida right now I would imagine uh with Helen we have a little bit more data and but it
is still frankly kind of early because these things do take time uh you know you'll recall that the response to Hurricane Katrina took a long time and that was a the new story for a very long time for George de bush in 2005 but so far basically the country isett pretty split even along partisan lines uh kind of sad that it's a partisan issue but uh here we are um so for example there was a yugov CBS News poll that asked how people think the Biden Administration is handling the aftermath of the Hurricanes 51% said
approve 49% said disapprove um you had similar polling from Yugo The Economist uh which found that when people when you asked about Biden's handling of Helen it was slightly underwater when you asked about FEMA's handling it was slightly above water but both of them were pretty polarized by party so it's kind of we're kind of in a situation where Democrats and Democratic leaning independants think that the government is doing a good job responding and Republicans and Republican leaning independants think that that the government is doing a bad job responding and of course I think this
is in large part or at least partially because of some of the misinformation that Donald Trump is UN spreading about money uh about female being out of money and money going to undocumented immigrants instead of to disaster victims which is not true um and so I think that it has become kind of partisan which in terms of impacting the election at least from a persuasion point of view I think it's basically a wash and we're not looking at a situation like um Sandy in 2012 with Chris Christie and or Katrina in 2005 with bush although
he wasn't running for re-election but like there are these past examples as you alluded to gayen of hurricanes either strongly helping or strongly hurting an incumbent government and it doesn't seem like we're shaping out that way because everybody's just retreating to their cars and Corners scan this QR code to go to the apple and Spotify podcast apps to download the full 538 politics podcast
