Brown Bag Seminar: The League of (No) Sanctions

We study the electoral impact of trade sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. We measure the impact using Italian electoral data from 2018 and 2022 general elections at the municipal level through a shift-share approach, attributing the sector-level export shock to each municipality according to its employment composition. Our results show that votes to the League (the most pro-Russian party in Italy) increase by 3.8 percentage points for every 1,000 Euro of Russian per-capita export shock at the municipal level. Votes to other parties and turnout do not appear to be affected.