Democrats and Republicans deeply divided on extreme weather, Post-UMD poll finds
Partisans remain split on climate change contributing to more weather disasters, and whether their weather is getting more extreme
Yet while there is wide public concern over extreme weather, Americans are deeply divided — along partisan lines — on whether climate change is helping to drive these events, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
The survey was conducted from mid- to late July, at the height of some of the hottest days the Earth has experienced in over 100,000 years. Not surprisingly, a large majority of U.S. adults — 74 percent — say they’ve experienced extremely hot days in the past five years.
But when asked if they think climate change is a major factor in those extremely hot days, 35 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say it is, compared with 85 percent of those who lean Democratic. Overall, 63 percent of Americans who experienced extremely hot days say climate change is a major factor.
There is a similar partisan divide over other extreme weather — such as severe storms, flooding, droughts and wildfires — with more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans attributing such events to climate change.
The vast majority of scientists have found that human activity has exacerbated the effects of climate change and its contribution to more-extreme weather. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found “unequivocal” links between human activity and the warming of the atmosphere, land and ocean, according to an IPCC report in 2021.
But the Post-UMD poll shows wide differences in how Americans view this science, and how their views have shifted. Since 2019, the polling shows, Republicans haven’t budged from their skepticism about climate change being a major factor in heat waves, while the percentage of Democrats making the link has increased from 79 percent to 85 percent.
“It’s always been hot here in Texas, but not this extreme,” said Democratic-leaning Anne Adcock, a 51 year-old who has lived in Dallas most of her life and has felt the winters getting colder and the summers getting hotter. “The hurricanes seem to be more extreme. The tornadoes seem to be more extreme. Since the beginning of our time, we’ve always had these things, but they seem to be more violent now.”
The survey, which featured a random national sample of 1,404 adults and was conducted online and by phone through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel, provides a snapshot of how Americans view extreme weather — and disagree about it.
In 2023, 87 percent of Democratic-leaning adults say extreme weather is becoming more severe, up slightly from 82 percent in 2019. By contrast, 37 percent of Republican-leaning adults say extreme weather is becoming more severe — ticking down from 42 percent in 2019.
Overall, more than half of Americans — 54 percent — say the area where they live is affected by climate change, including over three-quarters of Democratic-leaning adults and 3 in 10 Republican-leaning adults. Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say their area has been affected by severe storms, flooding, or droughts and water shortages in the past five years. About 1 in 3 said they experienced wildfires, and 45 percent said they experienced a combination of wildfires or wildfire smoke.
More than 9 in 10 Democrats (93 percent) agree with the scientific consensus that human activity is causing changes to the world’s climate, compared with 55 percent of Republicans.
But 6 in 10 Republicans say the media “generally exaggerated” the seriousness of global warming and climate change, according to the Post-UMD poll.
“I think a lot of the climate change stuff that we hear in the media is a little deceptive,” said Martina Childers, 58 year-old real estate agent in Tillamook, Ore. Childers, who identifies as conservative-leaning, said she believes that reporters write stories based on the opinions of the people they interview and not facts.
Conservatives accuse climate activists of exploiting weather disasters for their own agendas, and some scientists now fear of speaking openly on the topic. In June, an Iowa meteorologist resigned from his TV station, citing post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the threats he had received reporting on climate change.
The messaging by Republican leaders on climate very much aligns with the views of GOP-leaning voters.
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his Republican presidential bid in May, he made his stance on climate change clear.
“I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather,” DeSantis told Fox News. DeSantis — whose state faces yearly storm threats, some catastrophic — also has called hurricanes a way of life for Florida residents. According to the Post-UMD poll, a third of Republicans say severe storms such as hurricanes have affected their area.
Former vice president Mike Pence — who said in 2016 that “there’s no question” human activities impact the climate — told CNN this month that he wasn’t sure if climate change played a role in July’s landmark heat or the wildfire smoke that blanketed the East Coast. Pence also has launched a 2024 presidential bid.
President Joe Biden, who is running for the Democratic nomination and reelection in 2024, has called climate change “an existential threat to our nation and to the world” and has vowed to use his executive power to combat it. A majority of Democrats nationwide echo the president’s sentiment that the country is in a climate crisis, according to the Post-UMD poll, while most Republicans view it as a “minor problem” or “not a problem at all.”
Nine in 10 Democrats expect that their area will be impacted by climate change in the next 20 years, compared with 37 percent of Republicans.
“We’re seeing the impacts now,” said Amy Henley, 43, who lives south of Jacksonville, Fla. where her car insurance went up due to the heightened risk of hurricane loss and water damage and nine property insurers have left the state since 2021. “I’d like to think that there’ll be some human innovation that will help mitigate some of this, but I think it’s going to get worse before that investment takes place."
The poll was conducted by The Post and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement July 13-23. The sample of 1,404 U.S. adults was drawn from the NORC AmeriSpeak Panel, an ongoing survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; the error margin is larger among partisan subgroups.
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