With the mid-term elections approaching and the mainstream media agog and salivating over the possibility that the progressives they have long supported might be swept into power, it’s time for the polling.
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The most recent public opinion survey from the Washington Post WaPo/Ipsos delivered mostly unsurprising findings. Democrats are favored over Republicans in the next election, which could reflect Trump’s high unfavorable ratings, the public’s concern about the state of the country, or simply the normal “party in power loses seats” during the off-year elections. Looking at the poll, despite a majority of the public being dissatisfied with the direction of the country, especially the state of the economy, in part due to favorable redistricting, Republican’s chances of retaining Congress are almost within the survey’s margin of error. It seems that whichever party can best energize its voters to get to the voting booth will win the day.
What the polls also show is that climate change will not be a factor in this election, just as it hasn’t been in any recent election. As in the 2024 election, Democrats are running from climate change on the campaign trail like never before. Most Republicans, having common sense and an understanding of science, have long been skeptical of claims that a pending climate disaster justified a big-government remake of the entire economy, which is what climate alarmists are calling for.
Interestingly, this latest poll comes amidst daily headlines declaring unprecedented global heatwaves (a false claim, by the way) and a declaration from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that this July has been the hottest on record. Yet even with that, and despite years of climate change propagandizing and doomsaying in the media, the public remains unmoved. If polling is to be believed, climate change, at just 3 percent, ranks lower on the public’s list of top issues of concern than almost every other.
Concern about the economy, high prices, and jobs, as they almost always do even during good times, rank as the top issues of concern. To the Democrats’ consternation, immigration remains the second issue of greatest concern, trailing only the economy. Fourth is foreign policy, which is not surprising in the light of our continuing engagement with government-backed drug runners and the ongoing shooting wars in Iran and Ukraine. Voting integrity (the SAVE Act), LGBTQ rights, values/morality/fairness, and crime each came before climate change as an issue of concern. Climate change came in 16th or lower — it’s hard to tell since the Post story discussing the poll cut off its list at the top 15. Anything lower than 3 percent didn’t make the cut.
Although WaPo didn’t make much of climate change’s anemic rating in its survey, CNN produced a whole segment discussing its low ratings in the opinion poll. In the segment, after reiterating multiple times how hot it’s been, CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten explained:
The “bottom line when it comes to voters is, simply put, they don’t care [about climate change]. They don’t care,” Enten said, continuing, “I mean, just look at these numbers. Okay, top issue in a midterm vote — you can list up to three issues. The economy, not surprisingly, comes in at number one at 54%. Immigration, 28%. Look at climate change… all the way down here at 3%.
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“I’m not the greatest mathematician in the world, but I sure as heck know that 54% is a whole heck of a lot higher than 3%,” said Enten. “So despite the climate being so warm in the month of July, the hottest month on record here in the United States of America, the voters, simply put, do not say that climate change is going to be an issue on which they vote in the midterm election.”
Enten explained that concern about climate change is about the same as it was a decade ago. In 2016, 40 percent of those surveyed counted climate change as a big issue. In 2026, that number had declined slightly to 39 percent. This despite years of CNN, other media outlets, and many leftist politicians hyping climate risk as an existential threat to humanity.
Anyone who’s followed such surveys over the past few decades should not be surprised by these results. As I’ve noted multiple times in the past, climate change consistently ranks at or near the bottom as a major issue of concern for the public in general and registered voters, interestingly, even for voters who believe climate change is a direct threat to their health and well-being.
I don’t know whether Democrats or Republicans will carry the day in the election this fall, but whoever does, climate change won’t be the issue that put them on top. And since it’s not the crisis anti-science, misanthropic scolds have proclaimed it to be, that’s a step in the right direction for science and policy sanity.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization based in Illinois.
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