Resource Type: Research & Articles

A significant portion of Americans are effectively politically invisible because their names aren’t on any major voter registration or consumer files that political professionals and scholars rely on. At least 11% of all Americans are unlisted, and an additional 12% are listed with incorrect addresses. Unsurprisingly, these groups of Americans report being contacted by political campaigns far less often. Further, by racial/ethnic breakdown, roughly 40% of Black and Latino Americans are “unreachable” (i.e., unlisted or mislisted), but only 18% of white Americans are. This unreachable group, as a whole, is much lower-income than other voters, is significantly Democratic in party identification, and holds more pro-welfare spending policy opinions. Overall, the over-reliance on voter and consumer file lists may perpetuate political inequality, but there may also be a political opportunity to engage with this “unreachable” group.             

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including polls on federal clean energy spending.

Voters in the U.S. largely support spending money on clean energy infrastructure investment as a recovery tool to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Support is strongest for assistance being given to states that experienced recent extreme weather and climate disasters (80%), and nearly as many people (76%) support reinforcing existing and building new infrastructure that will withstand the changes in climate. Even more progressive policies like the multitrillion dollar economic stimulus focused on green energy receives support from the majority of voters (62%). Moreover, people support action being taken on these policies even when there is not bipartisan support from Republicans.