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