How can governments ensure voter support for unpopular policies? Governments often face the challenge of implementing policies that are unpopular among affected local communities such as the establishment of wind parks or the phase-out of coal mines. However, little is known about how governments can ensure local support to successfully enact such unpopular policies. We argue that local communities are likely to support these policies when they perceive them to be economically beneficial. More specifically, we posit that local support for such unpopular policies can be generated by distributing economic benefits such as jobs and investments in infrastructure to the affected local community. We test our argument by studying the political consequences of nuclear power plants on local communities which is arguably one of the most unpopular policy choices that a government has to make. More specifically, we study the effects of nuclear power plants on voting for the Green Party in Germany, a strong opponent of nuclear energy. We collected a novel dataset taking into account the geographic location of nuclear plants and voting records since the 1950s. Using difference-in-differences estimations, we find that the implementation of nuclear power plants has a negative effect on the vote share of the Greens. Additional analyses using individual-level panel surveys support the idea that this is driven by economic considerations. Overall, these results are relevant for the consequences of spatial allocation of policies and the implementation of unpopular policies.