The Effect of the U.S. Presidential Election on Ukrainian Refugees’ Return Plans and Expectations about the War

Refugees’ decisions on whether to return are of great importance both to their country of origin and to host countries. While previous literature has largely focused on the role of safety after a conflict ends, also many other aspects can play an important role. We study the role of expected international support and war expectations, in the context of the Russian war against Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine has resulted in the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, and Ukrainian war effort relies crucially on international support, with the United States playing a central role. As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have contrasting agendas concerning Ukraine, the outcome of the U.S. presidential election could have stark consequences for future assistance to Ukraine. In this proposed study, we examine the effect of the U.S. presidential election outcome on Ukrainian refugees’ expectations about the outcome of the war and on their plans to return to Ukraine. We identify the causal effects of the election outcome by carrying out surveys of Ukrainian refugees just before the U.S. presidential election and just after the election outcome is publicly known, assigning participants in two existing panel surveys randomly to either pre-election or post-election wave. Comparing war expectations and return plans in the two treatments allows then to estimate the effect of the election outcome against the baseline expectation in the pre-election wave. In the pre-election wave, we also ask respondents about their subjective probabilities of Harris and Trump winning the election.