The red states may be greener than we think
A recent survey from the Yale Project on Climate Communication suggests GOP voters may be somewhat out of step with their representatives when it comes to climate change: A majority of respondents (52%) think climate change is happening, while 26% think it isn’t, and 22% "don’t know." When presented with one of two conservative arguments ...
A recent survey from the Yale Project on Climate Communication suggests GOP voters may be somewhat out of step with their representatives when it comes to climate change:
A recent survey from the Yale Project on Climate Communication suggests GOP voters may be somewhat out of step with their representatives when it comes to climate change:
A majority of respondents (52%) think climate change is happening, while 26% think it isn’t, and 22% "don’t know." When presented with one of two conservative arguments saying America should respond to climate change, a solid majority (62%) say America absolutely should (23%) or probably should (39%) take steps to address climate change.
Only 1/3 Agree with Republican Party Positions on Climate Change and 1/2 on Energy
Only a minority of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change (35%), while a slight majority of respondents agree with the Party’s position on meeting America’s energy needs (51%).
Elected Leaders are Perceived as Unresponsive to Respondents’ Views about Climate Change
Few respondents (less than 20%) think people like themselves have influence over what elected officials think or do regarding climate change.
Of course, there’s also the question of priority. Even if Republican voters take the issue of climate change more seriously than the popular stereotype suggests, they don’t neccessarily care enough about it to affect their voting behavior. In a Pew poll taken during the 2012 election, only 26 percent of Republicans said environmental issues were important to their vote, lower than any other issue in the survey, including gay marriage and birth control.
Sociologist Theda Skocpol argues that effort to pass meaningful legislation on carbon emissions have failed partly because advocates have focused on the "inside game," building an "alliance of big professional evironmental organizations and leading corporations" rather than using community organizing strategies to build "an outside game, a nationwide network of groups that reaches into localities and states."
Not all polling data on climate change is quite as encouraging, but the Yale numbers suggest that red state voters may be more open to appeals on climate change than politicians.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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