This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls - including findings from the major surveys of voters who participated in Tuesday’s election.

HEADLINES

Fox News + AP/NORC – Even while electing Trump, most voters said that they’re concerned about climate change and that the country should prioritize clean energy over fossil fuels; climate voters were the most reliable voting bloc for Harris [Website]

AP VoteCast – Trump voters have much less confidence in him to handle climate change than other issues [Website]

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Regardless of the result, this was once again a pro-climate electorate. Fox News and AP/NORC found that around two-thirds of voters who participated in Tuesday’s election said that they were concerned about the effects of climate change in their own community. Additionally, the majority of voters said that the country should prioritize clean energy over fossil fuels.
• Voters trusted Harris over Trump on climate change, but he was able to make up for it among the voters who didn’t see a difference between the candidates. As predicted by pre-election polls, Fox News and AP/NORC found that climate change and abortion were the two issues that voters were most likely to trust Harris to handle better than Trump. And while both candidates won by large margins among the voters who trusted them more to handle climate change, around one-quarter said that they didn’t prefer one candidate over the other on the issue. Trump ended up carrying this quarter of the electorate by around 50 points. We’ll never know for sure what kind of a difference it would have made if the Harris campaign focused more on climate change, but the data shows that there was clearly room for her to draw more of a contrast on the issue.

GOOD DATA POINTS TO HIGHLIGHT

• [Climate Change] 65% of voters who participated in the election said that they’re concerned about the effects of climate change in their community [Fox News + AP/NORC]
• [Clean Energy] 56% of voters who participated in the election said that the country should focus on expanding clean energy over fossil fuels [Fox News + AP/NORC]