Instead of religious skepticism and a related increase in progressivism...: UFO sightings promote a more conservative worldview

Kitamura, Shuhei. 2022. “UFOs: The Political Economy of Unidentified Threats.” OSF Preprints. July 29. doi:10.31219/osf.io/tme8f

Abstract: In this paper, I study the effect of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) on political outcomes in the United States. Exploiting a random variation in the visibility of UFOs in the sky, I find that UFO sightings before general elections between 2000-2016 increased the vote share of the Republican presidential candidates. I also find that UFO sightings led voters to believe that the government should increase federal spending on military defense and on technology and science, although the latter effect was marginal. The results indicate that voters regard UFOs as unidentified threats to national security that warrant further defense enhancements and scientific research.