A new poll finds that a majority of Floridians believe climate action should be a priority for the president, and most trust Joe Biden to better handle climate change than Donald Trump.
The vast majority of respondents, polled between Oct. 28 and 29, said they would be voting in the upcoming general election (96%), with 52% saying they would vote for Biden and 45% for Trump. Three percent said they were not sure.
The pollwas conducted by Public Policy Pollingon behalf of the climate advocacy group Climate Power 2020.
Forty-seven percent of respondents said they voted for Trump in 2016 and 45% said they voted for Hillary Clinton.
Nearly half of the respondents said they were very concerned about climate change, with another 20% saying they were somewhat concerned. The rest said they were “not so concerned” (21%) or “not concerned at all” (11%).
Sixteen percent said climate change should be the top priority for the next president and 45% said it should be a serious priority. Meanwhile, 28% said climate change should not be much of a priority, 10% said it should not be a priority at all and 2% said they were not sure.
When asked if they support or oppose the U.S. transitioning away from oil and gas to renewable energy, 48% said they support the move, 34% said they oppose the move and 18% said they were not sure. Sixty percent said they support the U.S. government providing subsidies to invest in renewable energy, 26% said they oppose those subsidies and 14% said they were not sure.
Biden leads Trump by 11% in this poll when it comes to trusting the candidates to handle climate change.
The pollsters said the margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 3.2% with a survey size of 941 likely voters. The poll’s methodology is available here.
A similar Morning Consult and Politico pollconducted between Oct. 23 and 25 found that half of all U.S. voters believe the government should incentivize the use of renewable energy over fossil fuels to fight climate change.
Another poll from YouGov and The Economistreleased this week finds that climate change is the number three issue among all voters and number two for Democrats and young voters between the ages of 18 and 29.
Brendan Rivers can be reached at brivers@wjct.org, 904-358-6396 or on Twitter at @BrendanRivers.
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