News Release

Political and policy feedbacks in the climate system

Climate Change: Understanding feedback from nature, culture and society

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of California - Santa Barbara

Belief in Global Warming

image: Two graphs outlining Democrat vs. Republican beliefs that Global Warming is happening. view more 

Credit: Matto Mildenberger

Matto Mildenberger, University of California Santa Barbara explains how perceived experiences with climate change in the United States can be linked to political shifts in Congress, culture and society. He will demonstrate how partisan opinions about the prevalence and dangers of climate change in each of the 50 states and 435 congressional districts in the United States can change policymaking by Congress.

Announcing the 2018 Partisan Climate Opinion Maps

We are pleased to announce our new estimates of Democrats and Republicans who hold particular beliefs, attitudes, and policy preferences about global warming. These estimates cover both states and US congressional districts. The visualize the distribution of climate and energy beliefs among US Democrats and US Republicans.

This new data release will be made available shortly at: http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/

About the Partisan Climate Opinion Maps

Even as US partisan polarization shapes climate and energy beliefs and attitudes, substantial heterogeneity in climate opinions still exists among both Republicans and Democrats. To date, our understanding of this partisan variability has been limited to analysis of national or less commonly, state-level opinion poll subsamples. The Partisan Climate Opinion Maps provide new data about how Republican and Democratic climate and energy opinions vary across all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts. They reveal new spatial patterns with policy-relevant implications for the trajectory of US climate change policy reforms. These maps have now been updated through to 2018, and give new information about the state of partisan climate and energy beliefs in the current political context.

The public opinion estimates were generated using a statistical model that combines nationally representative survey data gathered by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication between 2008 and 2016 with voter registration, U.S. census, and geographic data. Party registration data is available for 32 states, and is imputed in the remaining states (i.e., in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin).

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Details about the methods can be found here:

Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J.R., Howe, P.D., & Leiserowitz, A. (2017) "The spatial distribution of Republican and Democratic climate opinions at state and local scales," Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-2103-0.

Additional information can be found in Howe, P., Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J.R., and Leiserowitz, A., "Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA," Nature Climate Change. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2583.

Can I use the data?

Yes. We encourage you to explore the maps and use the results in your own work. The data are available on our Data Download tab at the top of this page so that you can do your own analyses and create your own visualizations. If you publish an academic paper using these data please acknowledge the source by using the following citation:

Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J.R., Howe, P.D., & Leiserowitz, A. (2017) "The spatial distribution of Republican and Democratic climate opinions at state and local scales," Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-2103-0.

If you publish a news article, visualization or blog post using these data, please include a link back to the Partisan Climate Opinion Maps website.


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