Does a climate platform have electoral payoff?

[Aseem Prakash]

Hello friends and colleagues:

In its recent decision in West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that without explicit Congressional authorization, the EPA cannot compel power plants to stop using coal. Could Americans elect a pro-climate Congress? Opinion polls, including the most recent Pew Poll released yesterday,  suggest that Americans favor federal climate laws. But could this public support translate into votes in say the 2022 midterm elections? Our analysis of the 2020 Congressional elections suggests that Democrats who endorsed the Green New Deal (GND) resolution in Congress got a higher share of votes than their colleagues who did not (even after controlling for their 2018 vote share).  

Here is the commentary Meagan Carmack, Nives, and I published today in Washington Post/Monkey Cage:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/15/green-new-deal-election-midterms-democrats/

If you want to read the full article published in PLOS-Climate (open access), please click here:

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000043

If you cannot access the WaPo commentary, please email me and I will send you the PDF.

Thanks,

Aseem 

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ASEEM PRAKASH
Professor, Department of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
Founding Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics
University of Washington, Seattle
aseemprakash.net