Electric vehicle ownership and political preferences in Norway

Using a representative survey of about 23,000 Norwegian households in the years 2020 to 2022, we find that electric vehicle (EV) ownership is strongly related to political preferences on the cosmopolitan/liberal vs. nationalist/traditional axis. Regression results, using car owners only, show that when we control for income, education, and other demographic variables, as well as year and municipality fixed effects, a one standard deviation shift in the nationalist/traditional direction reduces EV ownership by 5.4 percentage points relative to the sample mean among car owners (18.8 percent EV ownership). We also find a relationship between EV ownership and political preferences on the left vs. right axis, where right means favouring less state involvement in the economy. Here a one standard deviation shift towards the right results in a 2.9 percentage point increase in EV ownership ceteris paribus.