Chart: Most US voters prefer candidates who care about climate change

Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.

Fifty-eight percent of voters in the U.S. would prefer to vote for political candidates who support action to combat climate change, and only 17% want candidates who oppose action, according to polling conducted in April and May of this year.

A survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication asked more than 900 registered U.S. voters this question:

If given a choice, would you prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming or one who opposes action on global warming? 

The partisan gap in responses was wide: 87% of Democrats and 55% of independents said they want candidates who back climate action, while only 29% of Republicans did. Still, in today’s hyperpolarized political environment, it’s interesting that nearly a third of GOP voters said they would lean toward a climate-conscious candidate.

The climate crisis is not a top priority for voters overall, however, according to the poll. It asked respondents about 29 issues, and climate change ranked 24^th among the issues people said would be ​“very important” to their votes in the 2022 U.S. Congress elections. Again, there was a large partisan gap: 63% of Democrats said global warming would be very important, but only 12% of Republicans expressed the same view.

One issue that did garner broader support is the deployment of clean energy. The poll found that 81% of registered voters support generating renewable energy (solar and wind) on public land, including 96% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans. These numbers are consistent with other polling results we shared in a chart of the week that found sky-high bipartisan support for solar and wind power.