Survey Says: Searching for Common Ground Amid Partisan Divide, with Brian Kennedy

Notable Quotes

• Democrats and Republicans share an interest in the economic effects of climate policy but differ in how they’d like to reach desired outcomes: “Broadly, what you see … is a shared concern about economic factors [related to climate and energy policies] among Republicans and Democrats, but differences in opinions in terms of how to use energy policy to keep prices low and to improve job growth.” (14:14)
• Partisanship more than geography predicts perceptions of extreme weather events: “For a few years now, we’ve asked Americans whether their local community in the last year has experienced various types of extreme weather, like hot weather, wildfires, severe floods, or storms. On this question (in which we don’t mention climate change), we also see partisan differences. Democrats are more likely to report that their community has experienced these kinds of extreme weather in the last year than Republicans.” (16:55)
• Both Democrats and Republicans support climate policies despite partisan divides: “Majorities of Democrats and Republicans have told us that they support a tax credit for home energy efficiency. We see the same type of pattern for a tax credit for carbon capture and storage. We’ve also seen this kind of pattern when asking about requiring oil and gas companies to seal methane leaks. Are Democrats more likely to say these things? Yes. But a majority of Republicans still favor these types of policy actions. So, that’s one area we’ve seen general agreement on.” (22:27)

Top of the Stack

• “How Americans View Climate Change and Policies to Address the Issue” by Brian Kennedy and Alec Tyson
• “What the Data Says About Americans’ Views of Climate Change” by Alec Tyson, Cary Funk, and Brian Kennedy
• Climate Insights survey series from Resources for the Future
• “Religious Landscape Study” from Pew Research Center
• “Surveying American Public Opinion on Climate Change, with Jon Krosnick” podcast episode from Resources Radio

The Full Transcript

Kristin Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future (RFF). I'm your host, Kristin Hayes. Today, I'm talking with Brian Kennedy from the Pew Research Center, which is a nonpartisan group that conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis, and other data-driven social science research. I'm sure I'm not supposed to play favorites with the organizations our guests work for, but I'm going to admit that the Pew Research Center is one of my personal go-to research institutions. I've always been drawn to the survey and polling data that they put out in order to get a lens into public perception, something I'm very intrigued by.

Brian is a key member of the team at the Pew Research Center focused on science and society, which includes climate change, energy, and the environment. So, today, we're going to talk about the Pew Research Center's most recent nationwide report from December 2024 on US public opinion on climate. We'll also have a chance to talk about some earlier special reports on skepticism and trust when it comes to climate communication, science, and scientists. Stay with us.

Hi, Brian. Welcome to the show.

Brian Kennedy: Thanks for having me, Kristin.

Kristin Hayes: It's great to talk with you. Let me start by giving you a chance to introduce yourself to our listeners. How did you end up at the Pew Research Center? I also wanted to ask if you've always been focused on the environment there, or if you've had a broader portfolio over time?

Brian Kennedy: I'm a trained political scientist, so that means I have three degrees in political science, which might or might not be too many depending on what you think. During my time in graduate school, which was a little meandering at times, I got really interested in how people make sense of complex science information and how they form their attitudes and issue positions on science issues. And one prominent science issue, of course, is climate. So, I ended up writing a dissertation focused on public opinion on climate change in the comparative context; so, cross-nationally.

A lot of that dissertation focused on comparing political differences in the United States to other countries. That was about a decade ago. Around the same time, the Pew Research Center was essentially starting a team that would study the intersection of science and society. I joined almost 10 years ago. During that time, I've worked on a lot of different issues. We did a lot on COVID. I've worked a lot on trust in science, but I've also gotten the opportunity to work a lot on climate, energy, and environmental issues. Over my time there, I've been an author or coauthor on about two dozen publications related to climate, energy, and environmental issues. So, it's been a major focus of mine over my career there.

Kristin Hayes: That's great. I've definitely seen your name littered around the website on this topic, so I'm really glad to have the chance to dive into this with you today. It also sounds like it was a dream role coming out of grad school, so I'm glad that you were able to put your research into a professional practice in such a direct way. That's great.

Let me start the meat of our conversation and ask you to tell me just a little bit more about your climate survey work overall. How often do you conduct those national surveys? Maybe you can also say just a little bit about how they're structured.

Brian Kennedy: Yeah. Obviously, public opinion on these issues goes back decades. Public opinion on climate change was first studied in the late 1980s. So, this area of study isn't necessarily something new. A lot of our work is building on those foundations that came before us, including work done at the Pew Research Center. Even before the science and society team was formed, other work was being done on climate, on energy, and on environment. But our first major survey on climate, energy, and environmental topics was in 2016, nine years ago—nearly a decade ago now.

Looking back at that survey, you see a lot of continuity. We’ve covered some topics over time, and there has been some evolution. One topic that we've looked at over time, almost annually, is attitudes towards specific energy sources, like wind and solar, along with oil, coal, and natural gas. We've also tracked attitudes toward climate change policies, or potential climate change policies, over time.

Our work has also evolved in a lot of different ways, which reflects both broader conversations and changes on climate and energy, as well as some specific administration priorities under the Biden administration. One way we've changed is we're doing more on energy now than we were nine years ago. You see that in some of our recent work we did on attitudes toward an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, as well as in some of our more recent work on attitudes toward electric vehicles, including interest in purchasing them, views on their reliability and cost, and views on policies surrounding them.

We've also become more interested in views on and experiences with extreme weather. Is extreme weather affecting your community? Do you attribute it to climate change? We’re also interested in views on policies related to extreme weather—should people be allowed to build in certain areas that are susceptible to extreme weather, and who should shoulder the burden of that risk?

Kristin Hayes: That's a great illustration of just how much is in these surveys.

I'll be totally honest with you: I had a hard time figuring out which questions I really wanted to ask because I felt like there were so many interesting angles that I could have taken. You just gave a great overview of the richness of the survey work that you all have done and continue to do in this space. Next, I wanted to ask you about the overarching picture as related to the surveys.

As I mentioned, the most recent national report came out in December 2024. My understanding is that it was based on data collection from a representative sample of 9,593 US adults, conducted in October 2024. It's a very specific number, and I'd love to know more about your methodology for identifying those nearly 10,000 respondents. Could you also say just a little bit about the mechanics of how you engage with them?

Brian Kennedy: This could be a whole podcast in and of itself.

We do most of our survey work now on the American Trends Panel. This is an online survey panel that we use regularly to do our surveys. Surveys have changed a lot in recent years. You’re seeing more and more of these online panels and fewer phone surveys using random digit dialing, which was the classic way of reaching Americans for a number of decades. 95 percent of the panel uses the internet, so about 95 percent of the public uses the internet. They take their surveys online, whether it's on a tablet or their smartphone or their desktop. But, of course, some Americans don't use the internet. It's important to us that our surveys are representative. So, that 5 percent—that small share of Americans who don't use the internet—take a phone survey. They're selected randomly using the United States Postal Service’s residential address file. Nearly every American is in that, with few exceptions. That gives us coverage of, basically, the US adult population.

There's a couple other things to say about our surveys here. First, we know certain people are more likely to take surveys than others, so we have to correct for that. That process is known as “weighting.” We know the general population demographics that we're shooting for in our surveys from US government surveys. Some respondents are weighted up and some are weighted down, depending on whether they're more or less likely to take our survey. That allows us to make estimates that we can infer to the population as a whole.

You also highlighted our sample size, which, yes, is large. Your classic phone survey has a sample of about 1,000–2,000 respondents. That's really great for inferring to the population in certain key subgroups. Where we have an advantage is in our large subgroups, which allows us to really hone in on key subgroups of interest.

I'll give you an example of this. One subgroup we've been really interested in tracking is Republicans by age. Where we see differences in Republicans by age is, particularly, on their attitudes toward fossil fuel sources. Younger Republicans are generally less supportive of using more coal, they're less supportive of more hydraulic fracturing, and they're less supportive of more offshore oil and gas drilling by pretty sizable margins—at least 15 percentage points to about 30 percentage points, depending on the survey year. We've seen this for a number of years. So, this is an attitude difference that we've been interested in tracking.

Another example of this Republican-by-age difference that we've been tracking is attitudes toward wind and solar. One thing we've seen in surveys, especially over the recent years, starting in the first year of the Biden administration, is a decline in Republican support for wind and solar. What we've been able to see through looking at the age groups is that this decline has been largely driven by older Republicans. Older Republicans have become far less supportive of wind and solar over this time period than younger Republicans. That's the real advantage of bigger age groups. It just allows us to do analysis that's a little more detailed with 10,000 respondents.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. That's great. That's a good preview of some of the issues that we'll talk about a little bit later, but that's really helpful.

I just have one follow-up question for you, if I may, about how you actually entice people to engage. If you're notifying 10,000 households and asking them to take part in this survey, do you have to over-notify to make sure that you'll actually get the number of respondents that you want? Or do people generally buy into taking these surveys?

Brian Kennedy: There's two stages of the sampling. There's the first stage of getting people into the panel, so, getting people to join. That's done yearly; they're reached out to, and we try to get them to join. Then, there's the second stage, which is getting people to respond once they’re in the panel. Those are two different phases. The first phase is more challenging, because fewer people respond. But generally, once they're in the panel, it's easier to get people to respond. We use incentives, like lots of people in the industry, to try to get people to respond. But your question does highlight one thing that's been a major theme in the industry in recent years, which is a decline in response rates, in getting people to take surveys. This is a huge challenge for everyone in the survey research industry.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. I feel like our listeners must be able to tell that I'm weirdly into this topic. So, thank you for answering all my questions here. I just find the world of survey research really fascinating.

Let's turn to the findings in the report. You started enumerating some of them, and there's a lot of meaty stuff here. I'm going to pick a few things that really jumped out at me, and I wanted to start by asking about what I'll refer to as RFF's mainstays. There were some findings in this most recent survey about policy and economics. In particular, the report noted that economic considerations—things like keeping consumer costs low—consistently rank highly when respondents think about potential climate policy. That makes a lot of intuitive sense, I think. But I wanted to ask if you can give us a broader perspective of what you find, broadly, around expectations about how policy can and will affect the US economy, as well as whether that's on a macro scale or a micro scale?

Brian Kennedy: Yes. You highlighted this idea that economic factors are important to people when thinking about climate change policies, and we've seen that consistently whenever we've asked that question. One thing that's interesting or striking to me about this is actually, pretty much, a shared partisan concern. When it comes to prices, I think two-thirds of Republicans said this is very important to them, as did about half of Democrats. On jobs, slightly more than half of Republicans and Democrats say that's important to them. This is something that may be slightly more important to Republicans, but is still pretty broadly shared. Where we see the breakdown [between the parties] is in the “how” question. How do you keep prices low or stable, and how do you increase job growth?

We see this in this question we last asked in 2023 about the energy transition. We asked, “What are your expectations for the energy transition for prices and jobs?” Generally, what we found here is that Republicans expect an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables to be worse for prices and worse for local jobs, while Democrats view it more positively. Large shares of Republicans will tell us that these things are worse, while few of them will say they will help. We see the opposite pattern among Democrats. So, you can see that more broadly in this question.

We've also asked a number of times about people’s expectations broadly for the economy with climate change policies in place. What we see here is the same type of pattern. About half or more Republicans, every time we've asked this question (and I think we’ve asked this four or five times since 2018), have told us that climate change policies will hurt the economy, while only a small share say that it'll help. The remainder say it won't make much of a difference. For Democrats, the pattern is reversed. Similar shares of Democrats will say climate change policy will help the economy, so around 50 percent, and smaller shares say they'll hurt the economy. It's the opposite pattern. So, broadly, what you see here is a shared concern about economic factors among Republicans and Democrats, but differences in opinions in terms of how to use energy policy to keep prices low and to improve job growth.

Kristin Hayes: I have another quick follow-up question. The way that you articulated that answer sounded, to me, like everyone taking the survey was acting on an understanding that there will be an energy transition, but whether or not that will actually help or hurt the economy was the question at hand. First, I want to make sure I'm interpreting that correctly. Are there survey respondents who genuinely indicate that they're not sure a transition is even really in the cards?

Brian Kennedy: Yes. The question is, basically, “If there was a transition, what would you expect?” There's not a direct question we've asked about that, but there's all sorts of hints of attitudes about that. There's a couple questions we've asked that can speak to that. One is … The last time we asked this was in 2023, and more than 8 in 10 Republicans told us they think it's very or somewhat likely that there'll be unexpected problems from a transition. So, real anxiety about the energy transition is reflected in that. The other thing we've seen, specifically related to electric vehicles, is a minority support for phasing them out by 2035. We've asked this a few times now.

Kristin Hayes: Phasing out internal combustion engines?

Brian Kennedy: Phasing out gas-powered cars, yes, by 2035. So, that speaks to some anxiety and some concerns people have about an energy transition. You especially see that among Republicans.

Kristin Hayes: That’s interesting.

Let me pull out another specific finding that we can talk about for a second. 64 percent of respondents from this December 2024 survey say that climate change currently affects their local community, either a great deal or in some way, but that average number also, I would say, belies these pretty significant partisan differences that you were just noting in your previous answer. I wonder if you can say just a little bit more about the Democrat-Republican split for that particular response.

Brian Kennedy: Yes. For that question, 86 percent of Democrats said that climate change is affecting their local community a great deal or in some way, compared to a minority of Republicans. I think it was around 4 in 10 [Republicans]. So, that’s a pretty huge difference.

I think there's a couple of things to say about this. First, we see large differences between Democrats and Republicans on climate change attitudes, largely across the board, whether they accept that human activity is playing a major role or some other attitudes. And I think it's just also part of perceptions.

The other thing I would say about this perception question is that we do look at attitudes by region, and what we see, broadly, is that partisanship seems to be a much bigger driver of attitudes than region. And when we look within regions, what we see there is partisan difference [in attitudes] across the board, regionally. So, that's one thing to say. The other thing I would say about this is … I’ll bring it back to our work on extreme weather. For a few years now, we've asked Americans whether their local community in the last year has experienced various types of extreme weather, like hot weather, wildfires, severe floods, or storms. On this question, which we don't mention climate change in, we also see partisan differences. Democrats are more likely to report, generally, that their community has experienced these kinds of extreme weather in the last year than Republicans.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. So, these are communities that are living through the same experiences but are having very different perceptions of their severity, of their cause, and of their impact on their daily life?

Brian Kennedy: Yes. We see Democrats and Republicans are answering these questions somewhat differently. Democrats are more likely to report to us that they've experienced one of these extreme weather events in the last 12 months in their local community.

Kristin Hayes: That's fascinating. And that's a great lead-in to another question that I wanted to ask. This is about one of those special reports that I mentioned at the beginning, and this one came out in August of 2023. For this one, I will note just a little bit of context. Rather than surveying the large number of folks that we've been talking about in this national survey, you and your colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with just 32 people, but 32 key people who self-identified as not seeing climate change as a particularly urgent threat to address. Again, I find this completely fascinating, and there's so much we could talk about, but I wanted to bring up just one particular finding to ask you about.

The report notes, and I'm going to quote here for a second, that "the disconnect between crisis rhetoric and the participants’ own beliefs and experiences drove doubt about the motivations of the people making these claims, sowing suspicion and deeper mistrust." Thank you for humoring me on that long quote, but that really jumped out at me because, the way I read this is that some of the climate crisis messaging is actually driving disbelief and suspicion rather than a sense of urgency for action, which I think was its intended goal among this particular population.

So, with that incredibly long intro, I wondered if you have any reflections on that, and on what we can learn from that finding?

Brian Kennedy: Let's say a few things about this group. First, it's a group of 32, so we're interested in learning more about their views, but they're not necessarily representative of everybody who has this view. It's more of an opportunity to hear from them in their own words. This is a group that said they see it as a low priority and do not think that human activity is the primary cause of climate change. That's the perspective they're bringing to it. And yes, I think you're right. For them, a lot of this rhetoric was somewhat alienating. They highlighted concerns about motivations, especially coming from politicians, as well as concerns about news media, about trust—a lot of that was a key theme here.

We can say a couple of things about this group in addition to this, which are a little striking to me. One is that they weren't necessarily against an energy transition. They expressed a number of different concerns, including economic concerns. A lot of them expressed concerns about the pace of such a transition. They also expressed some concerns about infringements on individual freedoms. These were key themes. Concerns also came up about the reliability of electric vehicles, but respondents weren't necessarily hostile toward an energy transition. I think we can also speak to our survey data there. So, yes, I've highlighted declining Republican support for wind and solar, but at the same time, large majorities of Americans support more wind and solar, and that includes still slight majorities of Republicans. So, that aligns with our survey data there.

The other thing I would say to you about this group is that they weren't necessarily against environmental protection. They especially see a role for it at the local level. Again, there are concerns about individual freedom, about who's in charge and those sorts of things. But they still saw a role for the government to play in environmental protection. Again, I think this speaks to some of our survey data, as well. We've asked a question a number of times about whether the federal government is doing too much or too little on a variety of environmental aspects. A lot of Americans have told us over the years that the federal government is doing too little to protect water quality in lakes, rivers, and streams; that they're doing too little to protect open lands and natural habitats. That includes a decent share of Republicans that say that, too.

Kristin Hayes: I'm grateful that you are emphasizing the areas of consensus and general, cross-population motivation to action, too. I feel like it's easy to talk about this issue in a very polarized way, and it has become a very polarized issue in the United States. But it's great that there's room for common ground.

I wanted to give you just another chance to reflect on any of those other areas of bipartisan agreements on environment-related issues and actions that come out of your survey work. Does anything come to mind?

Brian Kennedy: There's two themes here that I would highlight from recent years. One thing we know is that climate change—and we know this from a lot of survey data—does not rank, necessarily, as the top priority for Americans, especially for Republicans. It generally ranks toward the bottom of Americans’ priorities. But one thing we've seen from our issue questions or policy questions over the years is, actually, some agreement. For example, majorities of Democrats and Republicans have told us that they support a tax credit for home energy efficiency. We see the same type of pattern for a tax credit for carbon capture and storage. We've also seen this kind of pattern when asking about requiring oil and gas companies to seal methane leaks. Are Democrats more likely to say these things? Yes. But a majority of Republicans still favor these types of policy actions. So, that's one area we've seen general agreement on.

The other area we've seen the same patterns on is nuclear power. Since 2020, we've seen a sizable increase in the share of Americans who favor building more nuclear power plants, from 43 percent to 56 percent last year. And unlike the patterns we've seen with wind and solar or fossil fuel energy sources, what we've seen here is actually similar growth and support among both Democrats and Republicans. Now, Republicans are more supportive of nuclear power than Democrats, and that's held in every survey we've done on this topic since 2016. But the difference between Democrats and Republicans is roughly around 15 to 20 percentage points on this, which is actually quite a bit smaller than differences in views on fossil fuels and, increasingly, differences in views on wind and solar.

Kristin Hayes: Interesting. Are you going to add in any additional technologies and future surveys?

Brian Kennedy: We're always looking at where the field is, trying to keep up with it to get a scope of both where the field's going, as well as what's accessible to the public and what the public is seeing. Because ultimately, we want to ask questions that the public can express an attitude and opinion on in a way that they'd have at least some familiarity with. That's the balance of keeping track with technology and the energy industry and how mainstream these are becoming for the public.

Kristin Hayes: Great.

My final survey related question for you, before we turn to Top of the Stack: When's your next national survey?

Brian Kennedy: We're constantly tracking these types of things. We do one to two surveys a year, so everybody can stay tuned. I think we'll have something to say sometime this year, I'm sure. There’s more data to come.

Kristin Hayes: That's great. I always look forward to these as good lenses into what's happening in the world and how perspectives are changing. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk through the really interesting work that you all do.

I do want to close with our regular feature, Top of the Stack. I would invite you to recommend good content to our listeners of any variety on this topic or otherwise.

Brian Kennedy: Okay. So, first off, for the host: Over the winter, I spent a few hours, or maybe a little longer, digging into the recent survey you all did with Jon Krosnick and his team. I recommend everybody look into that for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the length of the trend. There's a lot of data going back to the late 1990s, so that was really interesting for me to read, to look for similar themes that are in that data that we also see in our data.

The other thing I would highlight is a massive survey put out about a month ago by our religion team. It's called the Religious Landscape Survey. It's a survey of about 36,000 Americans. It's designed, essentially, to provide estimates of religious affiliation and other sorts of key religious questions of interest for the American public. But what I would highlight for everyone is a few questions in the survey related to climate, energy, and environment; there's a chapter in there related to these questions. There's a question on the role of human activity in climate change, and there's a couple of questions related to religion and the environment. That's also something really interesting to look at.

Kristin Hayes: Great. I appreciate the shout-out for the Jon Krosnick Climate Insights work that we do here at RFF, and I’m happy to link back to that. I think Jon was on the podcast not too long ago, so maybe we can even have joint podcast listenership for people who are interested in the comparison. And it's great to have another media report of yours to look at, as well.

Thanks so much, Brian. It's been a pleasure.

Brian Kennedy: Thanks so much for having me.

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