Per November Polling, Global Warming Has Rocketed To . . . . #11 In Voter Concerns

[hatrack]

Climate change is only going to become a bigger voter issue as the US inches closer to the presidential election. The existential threat has already climbed close to the top of Democratic voters’ priorities. Even Donald Trump tossed an environmental talking point into his State of the Union turned campaign rally on Tuesday night. The topic has gotten a boost from huge protests, major reports issuing dire warnings, and extreme weather events bringing the issue home for Americans.

As of November, climate change became the 11th most important voting issue for registered voters, according to the most recent survey from Yale and George Mason University. That’s six spots higher since a previous survey in April 2019. When voters were asked to specify the single most important issue they considered when voting for a candidate, global warming ranked even higher — fifth on the list for all registered voters, and first for liberal Democrats.

“The short thing to say there is, wow, that’s never happened before in American political history,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “It’s now possible to say that climate change is one of the top voting priorities for one of our two major political parties.”

For Republicans, climate change still hasn’t broken into the top 10 priorities. But a third of them, according to that Yale and George Mason report, would support declaring global warming a national emergency. While Leiserowitz’s research shows that climate change is taken seriously by Democrats of all ages, the generational divide on climate change is stark among Republicans. “Young Republicans are much more convinced that climate change is real, that this is human caused, and are worried about it. They want action,” Leiserowitz says.

EDIT

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21125006/climate-change-election-2020-priority-voters-iowa-president-primaries

[mountain grammy]

1. By the time it reaches number one....

Well, you know.

[Mickju]

2. And yet I barely see it mentioned on DU except in this forum.

It is by far the most important issue facing humanity and we are doing very little about it in this country. Europe is way ahead of us, especially the UK with Extinction Rebellion even though they have a government that is almost as shitty as ours.