In the wake of mass tragedies, citizens expect a governmental response from executives (presidents, prime ministers, governors, mayors, etc.). These political elites are best situated to organize and implement a response to help communities recover and rebuild after a response, but they are also uniquely positioned to hold important press conferences. Mass tragedies historically cause a rally ’round the flag effect that boosts approval of such executives, but an increasingly polarized political environment may be reshaping such effects. Further, constraints imposed on executives by party activists may cause executives to use such events as opportunities to make electoral rather than policy gains by polarizing and blaming. Using original survey experiments, I find that while symbolic and unifying rhetorical strategies do not depolarize the electorate, they are the expected norm with voters of a governor’s own
and opposing parties prepared to punish a governor for using a mass tragedy to polarize and shift blame. Further, effects differ for natural disasters versus terrorist events/mass shootings with citizens punishing less after the latter. This has important implications for understanding how executives should best respond for their own electoral best interests in a highly polarized environment with constraints pressuring them to polarize.