After COP28, Voters Are Concerned That the World Is Not on Track to Meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C Target
By Grace Adcox and Catherine Fraser
After two weeks of negotiations — and more than its fair share of drama — the United Nations’ COP28 summit held in the United Arab Emirates concluded with the issuance of the first Global Stocktake. The culmination of a two-year negotiation process, the report analyzes nearly a decade of individual national climate contributions. It lays bare a growing gap between the ambitious climate goals set under the 2015 Paris Agreement and the current state of climate policies in place to meet those goals.
Following the end of COP28, new polling from Data for Progress finds voters continue to prioritize climate action, similar to findings from our pre-COP28 poll in late November. However, voter sentiments toward the Stocktake’s conclusions — especially that the world is on track to overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming — are largely negative.
When asked where climate change falls among other issue priorities, nearly a third of voters (32%) report that climate change is one of the most important issues to them personally, followed by 48% of voters who care about climate change, but don’t see it as a top issue. Among Democrats, climate change surges to be one of the most important issues for just over half of voters (51%), while voters under 45 (37%) report climate change is a top issue at higher rates than voters over age 45 (30%). Less than one-fifth of the electorate (17%) reports not caring at all about climate change, reaffirming previous Data for Progress and Climate Power findings that climate has become a kitchen table concern across the U.S.
We also provided respondents with a description of the COP28 convening, including information about the Global Stocktake. Respondents were then asked to describe their feelings in response to the Stocktake’s finding that, while significant climate progress has been made since 2015, countries are not currently on track to meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Voters generally report negative feelings in response to this finding, with the largest proportion of respondents indicating they feel “concerned” (42%) by this outcome, followed by worried (36%), skeptical (25%), and doubtful (22%).
In particular, after concern (55%) and worry (50%), Democrats report feeling “sad” (29%) in response to the Stocktake’s finding at considerably higher rates than Independents (18%) and Republicans (11%). Republican respondents, in contrast, report higher levels of skepticism (33%) in response to the Stocktake’s assessment, while just 24% of Independents and 19% of Democrats report such feelings. Notably, this could reflect multiple kinds of skepticism, including both skepticism about the level of progress indicated in the report or about the need for climate action at all.
As Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and other delegates return to the U.S. to offer their takeaways from COP28, it is clear that voters feel climate progress is not proceeding as rapidly as desired. With 80% of the electorate reporting that they care about climate change, insufficient climate progress reflected in the Global Stocktake — including a failure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — drives many of these same climate-conscious voters to reflect on COP28 with concern.
Grace Adcox (@GraceAdcox) is the Senior Climate Strategist at Data for Progress.
Catherine Fraser (@cathwfraser) is the Senior Climate and Energy Program Associate at Data for Progress.
Survey Methodology
From December 15 to 18, 2023, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,169 U.S. likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.