Environmental Polling Roundup – December 1, 2023
HEADLINES
Yale + GMU – Despite heavy polarization, the steady majority of voters want the country to prioritize climate change and most also want 100% clean energy [Release, Full Report]
Data for Progress – Voters say that the U.S. should take action on climate change, regardless of what other countries do; three-quarters say that it’s important for the U.S. to demonstrate “significant” climate action to the international community [Article, Crosstabs]
Potential Energy Coalition – In message testing across 23 countries, our responsibility to future generations consistently ranks as the most compelling rationale for climate action [Website, including download link for full report]
Tufts CIRCLE + Climate Power + CEA – Climate change ranks among the top issues for young people in the 2024 election, and young people who prioritize climate change feel especially motivated to vote [Website, Climate Power + CEA Memo]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Voters prefer international cooperation on climate change, but want the U.S. to take strong climate action regardless of what other countries do. New polling by Data for Progress finds that around three-quarters of voters want the U.S. to work with other countries to combat climate change and reduce the emissions that cause it. At the same time, new polls both from Data for Progress and from Yale and George Mason find that majorities of voters agree that the U.S. should take action on climate change regardless of what other countries do.
- Our generational responsibility on climate change resonates across major economies. In a massive, 23-country message-testing experiment, the Potential Energy Coalition finds that a message focused on protecting the planet for future generations is more effective at lifting support for climate action than messages focused on holding polluters accountable or on positive progress on climate change. This finding held true in every single one of the countries surveyed, including the U.S. and 17 other G20 nations.
GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT
- [International Action] 77% of voters say that it’s important for the United States to be able to show other nations at COP28 that we are taking “significant” actions to address climate change [Data for Progress]
- [International Action] 73% of voters agree that the U.S. should work with other countries to combat climate change and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions [Data for Progress]
- [International Action] 65% of voters agree with a statement that the United States “should take ambitious action to address climate change, even if other countries do not” and that “we should lead the world on this issue and set the example for other countries to follow suit” [Data for Progress]
- [International Action] 60% of voters agree that the United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, “regardless of what other countries do” [Yale + GMU]
- [International Action] 60% of voters support providing financial aid and technical support to developing countries that agree to limit their greenhouse gas emissions [Yale + GMU]
- [International Action] 57% of voters support providing financial aid and technical support to developing countries to help them prepare for the impacts of global warming [Yale + GMU]
- [Clean Energy] 64% of voters support transitioning the U.S. economy from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050 [Yale + GMU]
- [Clean Energy] 63% of voters support requiring electric utilities to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2035 [Yale + GMU]
- [Polluter Accountability] 70% of voters say that fossil fuel companies have too much influence on government decisions [Yale + GMU]
- [Polluter Accountability] 66% of voters support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a tax on the carbon they produce and using the money to reduce other taxes by an equal amount [Yale + GMU]
- [Issue Priority] More Americans name climate change and the environment as the single “most important issue” to them than any other issue aside from inflation/prices, the economy/jobs, and health care [The Economist + YouGov]
FULL ROUNDUP
Yale + GMU – Despite heavy polarization, the steady majority of voters want the country to prioritize climate change and most also want 100% clean energy [Release, Full Report]
The latest report from Yale and George Mason’s long-running “Climate Change in the American Mind” study focuses on the politics and policy of climate change and is full of important findings about voters’ climate attitudes and policy preferences.
Some of the many interesting takeaways are below, and the report is well worth reading in full for advocates who want a primer on the ways that partisanship shapes voters’ attitudes about climate change and clean energy.
The steady majority of voters want the U.S. to prioritize climate action. Most voters (56%) say that global warming should be a “high” or “very high” priority for the president and Congress, and this percentage has been trending up over the last few waves of the Yale/GMU survey going back to Spring 2022.
Clean energy continues to be somewhat less polarizing than climate change. A larger majority of voters say that developing sources of clean energy should be a “high” or “very high” priority for the president and Congress (64%) than addressing global warming (56%), and the difference is largely due to Republican voters.
Whereas around nine in ten Democrats say that both clean energy (93%) and global warming (87%) should be “high” or “very high” priorities for the country, Republican voters are 13 points more likely to say that developing clean energy should be at least a “high” priority (33%) than to say that global warming should be at least a “high” priority (20%).
Specific climate-friendly policies, including a shift to 100% clean energy, continue to earn much broader support than the idea of climate action generally. One of the consistent findings of this Yale/GMU study is that, while it’s difficult to get Republican voters on board with general calls to prioritize global warming, there is substantial bipartisan support for a lot of policies that can help to address climate change.
Majorities across party lines, for example, support each of the following policies:
- Providing federal funding to help farmers improve farming practices to protect and restore the soil so it absorbs and stores more carbon (85% support, including 75% of Republicans)
- Providing tax rebates for people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels (72% support, including 52% of Republicans)
- Providing tax credits or rebates to encourage people to buy electric appliances, such as heat pumps and induction stoves, that run on electricity instead of oil or gas (71% support, including 52% of Republicans)
Additionally, more than three-fifths of voters support the transitions first to 100% clean electricity and then to a 100% clean economy:
- 64% support transitioning the U.S. economy – including electric utilities, transportation, buildings, and industry – from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050
- 63% support requiring electric utilities to produce 100% of their electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable energy sources by the year 2035
Voters want the U.S. to be an international leader on climate change. Most voters (60%) agree that the United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “regardless of what other countries do,” including the vast majority of Democrats (84%) as well as around one-third of Republicans (33%).
Additionally, roughly three-fifths of voters support the U.S. providing financial aid and technical support in order to help developing countries that agree to limit their greenhouse gas emissions (60%) and to help developing countries prepare for the impacts of global warming (57%).
There is a clear and bipartisan appetite for greater accountability for fossil fuel companies. One of the key points of cross-partisan agreement in the survey is that fossil fuel companies hold too much power and need to be held more accountable.
More than two-thirds of voters (71%), including 93% of Democrats as well as 45% of Republicans, agree that fossil fuel companies “have too much influence on government decisions.” Meanwhile, only 18% of voters – including less than one-third (29%) of Republicans – trust fossil fuel companies to act in the public’s best interest.
Accordingly, voters widely agree that fossil fuel companies should not receive financial support from the government (66%) – including around three-quarters of Democrats (77%) and the majority of Republicans (54%).
Further, around two-thirds of voters (66%) – including nearly nine in ten Democrats (89%) as well as two in five Republicans (40%) – support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and using the money to reduce other taxes on Americans.
Data for Progress – Voters say that the U.S. should take action on climate change, regardless of what other countries do; three-quarters say that it’s important for the U.S. to demonstrate “significant” climate action to the international community [Article, Crosstabs]
Like Yale and GMU, Data for Progress finds that voters want the U.S. to take a leadership role in the global fight against climate change – even if other countries don’t follow.
More than three-quarters of voters (77%) – including 91% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 63% of Republicans – say that it’s important for the United States to be able to show other countries at the UN Climate Change Conference this week that “we are taking significant actions to address climate change.”
Additionally, while voters would prefer international cooperation to combat climate change, they also support the U.S. “going it alone” as necessary. Nearly three-quarters (73%) – including 88% of Democrats, 73% of independents, and 56% of Republicans – agree that the U.S. “should work with other countries to combat climate change and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.”
At the same time, the clear majority of voters agree that the United States should take ambitious climate action “even if other countries do not.” When presented with the two competing statements below, nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) side with an argument that the U.S. should act on climate regardless of what other countries do:
- “The United States should take ambitious action to address climate change, even if other countries do not. We should lead the world on this issue and set the example for other countries to follow suit.” (65% agree)
- “If other countries do not take action to address climate change, the United States should not either. It is not fair for us to act while other countries contributing to the problem are sitting still.” (25% agree)
Mot voters also support international agreements on key global climate policies – including phasing out fossil fuels, establishing a global fund to help developing countries cope with climate damages, and creating a global carbon market:
- 58% support establishing a global fund to provide financial support to developing countries that experience significant damages from climate change, such as funds to rebuild cities or infrastructure projects after major extreme weather events, like floods or hurricanes
- 53% support countries agreeing to a phaseout of fossil fuels, including coal and oil, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
- 52% support establishing a global market that regulates carbon credits, including verifying that carbon is accurately accounted for in these markets and enforcing rules on buyers and sellers that exist in other kinds of global trading markets
Potential Energy Coalition – In message testing across 23 countries, protecting future generations consistently ranks as the most compelling rationale for climate action [Website, including download link for full report]
The Potential Energy Coalition recently conducted a massive, international study of 57,968 respondents – including more than 2,000 respondents in every G20 nation aside from Russia – and found that the resonance of generational messaging on climate change is remarkably consistent across major economies.
In Randomized Control Trials, the Potential Energy Coalition tested three narratives in support of climate action – including a narrative focused on the urgent need for action to protect future generations, a narrative focused on holding climate polluters accountable, and a narrative focused on positive progress such as new clean energy development and jobs. In this experiment, the narrative focused on protecting future generations produced the biggest lift in support for climate action in every country surveyed.
Pulling from the report, with emphasis added in bold:
“Comparing the level of strong support (5 on a 1-5 scale) for government climate action by the groups exposed to each of these narratives, versus the control group who saw no narrative, reveals the “lift” that each narrative generates. The differences are clear. Averaged across all 23 countries, the generational urgency narrative lifts support by 11 percentage points; polluter accountability lifts support by 7 percentage points; and the climate progress narrative lifts support by just 3 percentage points… The generational urgency narrative is the winning narrative in each country, as well as overall…
The generational urgency narrative showed a compelling impact. Of the three narratives, it had the greatest lift of the three regardless of how we cut the data: for men and women; for all age groups; across the political spectrum; at all education levels; in cities and in villages…
What is driving such the broad power of the Urgency & Generational narrative across countries, across the political spectrum and across the world?
Among the reasons people have for supporting climate action, the data shows one overwhelming and universal reason: to protect the planet for future generations. Across countries, this motivation leads by a large margin. On average it is a full 12x larger than the motivation, for example, to increase jobs and economic growth.”
Tufts CIRCLE + Climate Power + CEA – Climate change ranks among the top issues for young people in the 2024 election, and young people who prioritize climate change feel especially motivated to vote [Website, Climate Power + CEA Memo]
The latest youth poll from Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), with support from Climate Power and Climate Emergency Advocates (CEA), finds that climate change is a high-ranking and motivating issue for young people (ages 18-34) in the 2024 election.
When asked to choose their top three issue priorities, the cost of living is the dominant concern for this age group: the majority of young people (53%) cite the cost of living / inflation as a top-three issue.
Climate change (26%), jobs that pay a living wage (28%), and gun violence prevention (26%) form the clear next tier of priority issues for young people after the cost of living / inflation.
Importantly, the poll finds that youth who prioritize climate change are poised to play an outsized role in the 2024 election because climate-motivated youth are especially politically engaged relative to their peers.
Pulling from the memo linked above from Climate Power and CEA:
“Young people who chose addressing climate change as one of their top concerns were 20 points more likely than those who did not to say they’re extremely likely to vote in 2024 and more likely to engage in various forms of political action…
Significantly, 72% of voters who care about climate say they are ‘extremely likely’ to vote in 2024, compared to 57% of youth overall. This figure shows that climate is a motivating issue in the 2024 election.”
Related Resources
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