Katrina happens in Sept 2004

[phk]

Who would you vote for? What would the map look like?

[minionofmidas]

There were fairly devastating hurricanes in Florida in the fall of 2004. They were handled very well by FEMA (though the logistics involved were presumably less complex, the issue here is that FEMA did its job and didn't leave the local authorities to sort things out, which of course they could not), and it didn't hurt Bush one jot. One can only assume that Katrina wouldn't have been mismanaged the way it was if it had occurred during the presidential campaign.

If it was, though, the attendant press would probably have been enough to elect John Kerry President, by a tiny margin. But it's exceedingly unlikely.

[Mr. Morden]

I did a thread on this question back in 2006:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=44125.0

As I said back then, a lot of it turns on whether Bush's response would have been any better if it had happened just before the 2004 election, and *that* question hinges on whether you think Katrina was a sufficiently massive disaster that the federal government was never going to be able to adequately respond to it no matter the circumstances.

And if not....if you think that Bush seriously bungled it in a way that wasn't inevitable, did he bungle it because he's incompetent or did he bungle it because he didn't care?  If the latter, then yeah, having it take place before the election would have changed the response significantly.  But if he bungled it because he's incompetent, then it doesn't matter when the timing of the storm would have been.  He'd have messed it up anyway.

[minionofmidas]

And if not....if you think that Bush seriously bungled it in a way that wasn't inevitable, did he bungle it because he's incompetent or did he bungle it because he didn't care?  If the latter, then yeah, having it take place before the election would have changed the response significantly.  But if he bungled it because he's incompetent, then it doesn't matter when the timing of the storm would have been.  He'd have messed it up anyway.

I think that's a false dichotomy.

The man is incompetent and cares about very little except where his next pretzel is coming from. But he does listen to his political advisers, and tries to do what they tell him. And they'd have reacted much quicker - there'd simply have been far more of them - if it happened during a presidential campaign.

Obviously, some sort of negative publicity was inevitable. A lot depends on the exact timing.

[7,052,770]

Kerry wins in a landslide