For Many Colorado Voters, Climate Is Personal and Pushing Them at the Polls
In a story about the role climate change plays for voters in Colorado, a story by Colorado Public Radio references a Climate Insights 2020 survey installment and quotes RFF University Fellow Jon Krosnick.
Public opinion surveys suggest voters are increasingly thinking like Delanoy, especially in Colorado. Since the 1990s, polls have shown about four out of five voters believe climate change is happening. What’s new is how animating it’s become for a growing segment of voters.
“I've never seen anything like this,” said Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University.
Krosnick has led a project to measure public opinion on climate change for 23 years. In the latest survey, a quarter of U.S. voters said global warming is “extremely personally important,” marking a nearly twofold increase from 2015. The same appears to be true in Colorado. New findings from an upcoming report by Krosnick, along with other researchers at Stanford, Resources for the Future, and ReconMR, found 24 percent of Coloradans see warming the same way.
Krosnick said that means climate change has become a critical motivating issue for a segment of the Colorado electorate, along the lines of abortion or gun control.
