Emerging evidence suggests that elections can play an important role in shaping deforestation, for instance by incentivising politicians to allow increased utilisation of forests in return for political support. In this new paper, we created an annual database from 2001 to 2018 on political elections and forest loss for 55 tropical nations and modelled the effect of elections on deforestation. Our results show a pervasive loss of tropical forests and suggest that competitive elections can be potential drivers of deforestation. See the paper here.