Resource Type: Polling & Surveys

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 national polling on energy policy, the factors behind people’s climate views, and electric vehicles + new polling in Michigan on energy issues and the state’s climate plan.

The year 2023 is well under way, but I’ve been getting around to looking back at 2022, and wanted to share our roundup of some of the most notable resources—case studies, reflections, field tests, polls, and social science papers—that we added to the Resource Library last year (you can also check out our mid-year roundup* from last May for even more 2022 action; and our best of 2021* too). While there’s too much good stuff to share it all here, I’ve focused on what the year taught us in three priority areas: multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) movement building; climate justice campaigning; and organizing & mobilizing.