Are Voters Eager to Push Policies on Energy and Climate Change? Yes and No

CongressDaily recently offered a report highlighting a distinction that probably warrants passing on.

It seems that, when asked, two-thirds of Americans say it is "very important" for Congress to pass legislation on energy policy. Sounds about right, right? But, only one-third of Americans said the same about climate change.

So it seems a large portion of the electorate puts these two areas of public policy in two different categories (likely because some don’t believe climate change is a valid concern). Shedding some light on the matter is that there is largely a partisan divide here. According to the poll, climate change showed the widest gap between Republicans and Democrats of all the issues that were asked about (including prioritization of job creation, immigration and regulating financial markets). Just 17% of Republicans said it was important to act on climate change, while 47% of Democrats and 29% of independents thought it was.

Is this surprising, or on par with what you’d expect?

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