This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls - including new polling about how voters in last month’s election felt about the clean energy transition and about how the election results are impacting public opinion about climate change.

Headlines

ecoAmerica – Americans have grown more concerned about climate change since before the election, with many saying that Trump’s victory deepened their concerns [Release, Report, Topline]

Navigator – Voters, including swing voters, side more with clean energy advocates in the debate over the country’s energy future [Release, Deck]

Key Takeaways

• We’re starting to see indications of a “thermostatic” increase in environmental concern in response to Trump’s victory. The thermostatic model of public opinion suggests that public sentiment tends to shift in the opposite direction of policy, providing a check on whichever party is in power because voters are wary of policy moving too far to either side. There’s a lot of good evidence to support this model, such as the large drop-off in support for clean energy that we saw when Biden took office. Now, as the thermostatic model would predict, we’re starting to see a post-election reversion in the opposite direction: ecoAmerica finds that the public’s climate concerns have increased since before the election, with about half of Americans saying that they have become more concerned about climate change specifically because of the election result.
• There is a wide range of climate attitudes within the Trump coalition. Post-election polls have shown that Trump won in spite of voters’ lack of trust in him to handle climate change, as voters said that they trusted Harris over Trump by a wide margin to handle the issue. Additionally, while Trump won overwhelmingly among the segment of voters who deny the problem, he also won a significant chunk of voters who are concerned about climate change. As a result, there are a lot of conflicting climate views within his coalition and it would be a mistake to assume that Trump voters share his dismissiveness about climate change. ecoAmerica, in fact, finds that the majority of Trump voters are at least “somewhat” concerned about climate change and that Trump voters are just as likely to say that they’re “very” concerned about climate change as to say that they aren’t at all concerned about it.

Good Data Points to Highlight

• [Climate Change] 72% of Americans say that they’re at least “somewhat” concerned about climate change, an increase of five points since June [ecoAmerica]
• [Climate Change] 45% of Americans say that the result of the election made them more concerned about climate change, while just 5% say that it made them less concerned [ecoAmerica]
• [Clean Energy] By a 55%-45% margin, voters side more with an argument in favor of prioritizing clean energy over an argument in favor of prioritizing oil and gas [Navigator]