The Two Americas of Global Warming Perceptions: Concern Among Dems Rises While Republicans Remain Unmoved

Gallup’s annual Earth Day survey of public attitudes on the environment is out today, and the results are consistent with the patterns revealed across other surveys this year. In short, while 2006 featured a historic high in media attention to global warming and Al Gore scored publicity success with Inconvenient Truth, there still exists a “Two Americas” of public perceptions when it comes to the urgency of global warming.

As I have detailed here many times (1,2,3), the “Pandora’s Box” frame of looming climate crisis continues to activate Democrats on the issue, but the powerful perceptual screen of partisanship drowns out the issue for the overwhelming majority of Republicans. As a key indicator, see the graph above. Worry about the issue among Dems climbed even higher over the past year to a record high of 85%, while Republicans remain unaffected at 46%.