How 'Pro-Climate Voters' Could Sway the 2024 Election

Recent survey data identified more than a third of registered voters as "pro-climate voters," meaning they both prefer candidates who support action on global warming and rank climate change as a top issue.

The biannual Yale Program on Climate Change Communication survey also found that another 25 percent of voters prefer candidates who support climate action even though they do not say that it is a very important voting issue to them. Only about 15 percent of voters said they want candidates who oppose climate action.

"So, by a ratio of more than four to one we see that Americans are leaning towards supporting candidates that are going to take action on climate change," program director Anthony Leiserowitz told Newsweek.

Leiserowitz said the polling shows climate change is a potentially decisive issue in a close election because of its importance to motivate key demographic groups for President Joe Biden's campaign. In a political environment where close elections can hinge on a candidate's ability to turn out the base of supporters, climate change looms large.

The survey also reveals a major communications challenge for Biden with just four months before Election Day.

Leiserowitz's team and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication conducted the survey in the weeks between April 25 and May 4, interviewing 1,031 adults, including 896 registered voters. The resulting nationally representative survey, "Climate Change in the American Mind," has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"Global warming is one of the absolute top voting priorities for liberal Democrats, which is about 60 percent of the Democratic party, and that is the base of the party," he said.

The Yale polling data shows climate change has remained at the top of voting issues for Democrats over several election cycles as other issues rose and fell in importance.

The Yale Program's findings echo the results of a study published in January by the Center for Environmental Futures at the University of Colorado, which explored climate change as a voting issue in the 2020 presidential election.

The U.C. researchers found that the importance a voter placed on climate change was one of the strongest predictors of their choice of a candidate, especially among independents, and those voters broke heavily—about 77 percent—for Joe Biden. There were many issues on voters' minds in 2020, of course, but the researchers found that, in a tight race, the climate-minded voters made a difference.

"We estimate that this advantage was probably large enough in 2020 to change the outcome of the presidential election in the Democrats' favor," the study's authors concluded.

Leiserowitz said the Yale and George Mason survey findings also cut against some conventional political thinking about which voters are motivated by climate concerns.

"Many people presume this is an issue that only white, well-educated, high-income, latte-sipping liberals care about," he said, "and that's not the fact."

The Yale survey found that Hispanic or Latino respondents were among those most likely to be pro-climate voters.

"They're more worried about it, they're more supportive of actions and more willing to get personally involved," Leiserowitz said.

Additional demographic analysis revealed more about how different generations view climate change. Among Democrats, age did not correspond with a large difference in voter attitudes on climate.

"The interesting generational difference is actually within Republicans," Leiserowitz said. Younger Republicans that Yale surveyed are much more convinced that human-caused climate change is happening than are older ones. "There are changes underway within the Republican coalition," he said.

A separate survey in January commissioned by the American Conservation Coalition focused on rural conservative voters between ages 18 and 35.

"We found that they favor transitioning to clean energy, and they want to vote for a candidate who talks about climate change and has a plan to address it," the coalition's Vice President of Communications Karly Matthews told Newsweek.

Matthews said younger Republicans generally rank climate concerns behind other issues that will dictate their voting decisions, such as immigration and the economy. However, a candidate who denies the reality of climate change could risk alienating younger voters in the party base.

"It's really important that candidates, regardless of if they're Democratic or Republican, talk about climate in a productive way so that it's not that deal breaker for their campaign," she said.

The Yale and George Mason survey results should be good news for President Biden and Congressional Democrats. After all, his administration has taken historic measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and transportation, promote the growth of renewable energy and include communities of color in climate action.

Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, has called climate change a hoax, withdrew the U.S. from the international Paris Climate Agreement, and has said he will end government support for EVs and wind power, among other things.

The Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's signature 2022 legislation on climate change, has unleashed billions of dollars of clean energy investment and the bill passed Congress without any Republican votes.

But the survey also points to a problem for Biden and Democrats: Few voters said they know much about what the administration has done on climate change. Only 39 percent of all voters said they have heard "some" or "a lot" about the Inflation Reduction Act. Even among the pro-climate voters, only about half reported hearing much about the landmark law.

When survey respondents read a short, neutral description of the Inflation Reduction Act, 74 percent of voters said they support it. The support was strongest among Democrats, but 70 percent of moderate Republicans also supported the Act once they read about it.

"When you tell people what's in it, overwhelmingly Americans of all stripes support it," Leiserowitz said. "That strongly indicates there's a massive communications failure here."

Democrats have delivered on the issue and yet large portions of their party base do not seem to know that. Further, Leiserowitz said, climate change is a common concern among the coalition of demographic groups that Biden relied on to win in 2020 and will need again this year—young voters, Black and Latino voters and suburban women.

"If they are going to try to 'get the band back together again,'" Leiserowitz said, "it's going to be really important that they help people understand that while there's still more work to be done, Democrats have actually delivered some of the most far-reaching climate action the world has seen."