Thread by @timbolord

New report out today: “Polls Apart? Mapping the Politics of Net Zero”. We’ve looked at public opinion data on climate action and find record levels of concern – but also real risk of growing political divisions. Thread (1/) @institutegc institute.global/policy/polls-a…

Recent polling data indicates high levels of concern, and there is currently consensus around climate change in the main parties’ positions – 95% of voters supported parties committed to net zero at the 2019 election. (2/)

We’ve explored how deep that concern is, and whether a political coalition to act on net zero can be built and maintained. (3/)

First, do people care about climate change? Concern is at record highs – and unlike after the financial crisis, we don’t see a fall in concern in response to Covid. Looks like climate change is here to stay as a major public concern. (4/)

Do people care in comparison to other issues? Increasingly, yes - the percentage who see climate change as one of the three biggest challenges has increased by almost 250 per cent. (5/)

The cliché is that climate change is mainly a concern for young/urban/middle-class voters – but data doesn’t back that up. Every demographic has seen concern up at least 10% since 2013- fastest rise among e.g. older voters (6/).

But we also looked at concern on the basis of values – and found important differences. (7/)

Socially conservative or ‘closed’ voters tend to be much less supportive of action on climate change than more socially liberal ‘open’ voters. This is a more important predictor than demographics or left/right views. (8/)

At the same time, party identification has been shifting on open/closed lines. Conservative voters are almost 6x more likely to have closed values; Labour supporters 2x more likely to have open values. (9/)

The data on climate echoes the Brexit debate - where a fragile consensus of the main parties in favour of EU membership was exploded after 2015, and voters split on the basis of values. (10/)

This means the new dividing lines of British politics threaten the development of a political coalition to support the action needed for net zero. The ground is fertile for climate change to become a divisive party political issue.(11/)

We see some of the seeds of that already – with political divisions on the proposed Cumbria coal mine, fuel duty, policies to reduce emissions from homes etc. Without careful political strategy and wide engagement, those divisions will only increase (12/).

What to do about it? Strengthen voters’ understanding of what net zero means; design policies in ways that appeal to voters with different values; create a strong, patriotic sense of national mission, but with local ownership of solutions; focus on growth and jobs. (13/)

So: reasons for optimism, but also for concern. Developing a unifying politics of the environment that speaks to the concerns of the large bulk of the electorate is perhaps the biggest long-term political challenge of our time. (/ends)