Location: Georgia

Across the US, communities are organizing around IRA opportunities, mobilizing support for clean energy, and building durable power. And they’re learning a lot about what works well (and not so well)! This week, we’re excited to share reflections and insights from our interviews with Autonomy Strategies (with Conexión and Voto Latino), Local First Arizona, Sustainable Georgia Futures, and Wisconsin Conservation Voters. Hat tip to our partner 89up for their work on this!

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including national polling on gas exports, household electrification, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law / IIJA, and Americans’ trust in scientists plus new polling of Latino voters in Georgia.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including on prioritizing clean energy sources over fossil fuels, voters supporting investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, and clean energy in key states.

There continues to be clear opportunity to boost support for clean energy in key states, with battleground voters shifting in favor of the Biden administration’s clean energy plan in response to positive messaging. In Arizona, support for Biden and Democrats’ clean energy plan increase 21 percentage points (from 39 to 60%) after reading about it. Similarly, support in Georgia increased 17 percentage points and support in Wisconsin increased 25 points. However, voters in these states are worried that clean energy policies might cost them more money in the short term.

Voters in rural-heavy counties in Georgia and Ohio tilt toward supporting wind and solar farms, but attitudes are quite malleable. Inoculation against character concerns is hard, so it may be better to focus proactive messaging on the benefits of wind and solar farms. A plurality of voters start out supporting wind and solar farms in their community but fewer than half of voters have intense attitudes either way and one-quarter are completely neutral. While voters intuitively get the pollution reduction benefits of these farms, they are more skeptical of the benefits to themselves and farmers – and they are concerned about their ROI. Encouragingly, our messaging is effective at increasing the belief that wind and solar farms will provide benefits to farmers and families – and that they create enough energy to be worth it. However, efforts to inoculate people against concerns about the impact on community character in this research were unsuccessful. Opposition attacks have a real impact, but simple pushback that ties this disinformation to Big Oil and Coal CEOs is quite successful in defusing these attacks. Positive messaging is effective at building support, especially with Democrats, less conservative Republicans, and women.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polling on voters’ reactions to arguments from the two parties on climate change; the impact of climate change and the environment on battleground voters’ decisions in the upcoming midterms; an experiment in communicating about human-caused climate change using a “heat-trapping blanket” metaphor; Americans’ personal experiences with climate change; and the widening generational gap in Republicans’ environmental attitudes.