Pollster Mallory Newall said in an interview that aired Friday on “What America’s Thinking” that the West Coast is leading the charge in sounding the alarm on climate change.
“There’s a little bit of a regional split too, which I think could potentially be related to partisanship,” Newall, research director of Ipsos Public Affairs, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons on Thursday.
“It’s folks out on the West Coast that are really driving this sense of urgency,” she continued.
A Hill-HarrisX survey released Friday found that 51 percent of West Coast respondents said “current environmental patterns are extremely troubling and we must act now,” while 47 percent of respondents in the Northeast said the same.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents living in the South said there should be a sense of urgency, while 39 percent of Midwest respondents said the same.
The Hill-HarrisX poll revealed a strong partisan divide on the issue, with a majority of Democrats (62 percent) saying that environmental conditions are extremely troubling and action must be taken. Republican respondents, the poll found, were three times less likely to hold the same opinion.
Newly elected progressive Democratic lawmakers in Congress have shined a new light on the issue of climate change, floating what they have called a “Green New Deal” to shift the U.S. to renewable energy.
— Julia Manchester
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