Most Voters Didn’t Believe Disinformation About the Texas Power Outages — Except Conservative News Watchers
By Danielle Deiseroth and Marcela Mulholland
Two weeks ago, millions of Texans went days without heat, power, and water as the state endured wide-reaching power outages. Many energy experts, including Professor Jesse Jenkins of the Princeton Net-Zero America project, wrote detailed explainers on what caused the Texas blackouts. But Texas Republicans like Governor Greg Abbott and Representative Dan Crenshaw chose to ignore the experts, and instead went on cable news and social media to blame renewable energy and frozen wind turbines for the state-wide outages. According to Media Matters for America, Fox News aired 128 lies about the Texas blackouts between February 15 and February 17. On Fox News, hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson made outlandish claims about the dangerous path America is headed down if we continue to make investments in renewable energy, while Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN) aired similar claims.
In a national survey conducted between February 19 and 22, 2021, Data for Progress asked likely voters nationwide several questions about the recent Texas power blackouts to assess the impact of the lies that Abbott, Crenshaw, and others have been spreading about the outages and better understand the role conservative news played in driving those falsehoods.
Despite the flood of disinformation about the root causes of the Texas blackouts, most voters didn’t believe the lies that investments in renewable energy and frozen wind turbines were to blame. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of voters said unusually cold winter weather caused Texas power plants — including coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables — to go offline. Only 28 percent of voters thought the outages were caused by Texas investing too much in renewable energy that could not stand up to the cold weather conditions. Over three-quarters of Democrats (77 percent) and nearly two-thirds of independents (63 percent) believed the blackouts were caused by failures at power plants of all energy sources. However, only 50 percent of Republicans accurately identified the cause of the blackouts. Among Republicans, 41 percent believed renewable energy and frozen wind turbines were to blame — the highest among all partisan groups.
To understand the extent that conservative news outlets like Fox News, NewsMax, and OANN were driving the spread of disinformation among Republicans, Data for Progress analyzed responses among self-identified Republicans who indicated they watched Fox News, OANN or NewsMax, and none of these outlets.
Among self-identified Republicans, a majority (55 percent) who indicated they do not watch Fox, OANN, and Newsmax agreed the outages were caused by unusually cold weather in the state, while 34 percent blamed investments in renewables and frozen wind turbines. While a slim plurality of Republican Fox viewers (47 percent) attributed the grid-wide failures to inclement weather, 43 percent blamed Texas for over-investing in renewables and frozen wind turbines. However, a majority of Republicans who watch OANN or Newsmax (52 percent) place the blame on renewables and frozen wind turbines rather than system-wide failures.
Many factors contributed to the catastrophic statewide power failures in Texas — decades of deregulation, failures to weatherize power plants, and extreme weather caused by climate change, just to name a few. While millions of Texans went days without heat, electricity, and water, Texas Republicans spread unsubstantiated claims on right-wing media — and even fled to Mexico — rather than face the hard truths of what really caused the blackouts. As climate change continues to make weather more and more extreme each year, it will be more important than ever to combat climate change disinformation and ensure policymakers make much-needed investments to modernize the nation’s electricity grid and set America on a path to a sustainable, resilient future.
Danielle Deiseroth (@danielledeis) is the Senior Climate Data Analyst at Data for Progress.
Marcela Mulholland (@x3Marcela_) is the Political Director at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology:
From February 19 to February 22, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1555 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±2 percentage points.