New Polling Finds Strong Support for the Proposed SEC Climate Disclosure Rule
By Grace Adcox
In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new climate disclosure rule requiring some businesses to release information in their regular financial reporting about projected risks to their company’s operations as a result of climate change. As the SEC comes closer to finalizing this rule, pushback from corporate special interests and lawmakers has grown, yet this pushback does not align with public opinion on the matter.
New polling from Data for Progress and Unlocking America’s Future finds that likely voters across parties broadly support the proposed SEC rule on climate disclosures after reading a brief description.
When provided with a brief description of “responsible investing,” including a reference to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, a strong majority of voters (71%) support responsible investing, including Democrats (80%), Independents (69%), and Republicans (64%).
Voters were then asked whether what they’ve heard about the term “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)” has been mostly positive, mostly negative, or neutral — or whether they haven’t heard anything at all. While over half of voters say they have read or heard about ESG (59%), 40% say what they’ve heard is neutral, and only 9% say what they have heard about ESG is mostly negative. These findings indicate that partisan cues on ESG are not currently reaching a large portion of the electorate. To the extent that there are partisan differences when it comes to what voters are hearing about ESG, Democrats are more likely to have heard positive things, while Republicans are more likely to have heard negative things. Notably though, across partisanship, around four-fifths of voters have not heard anything positive or negative about ESG, if they’ve heard anything at all.
Next, respondents were introduced to the proposed SEC rule, which would require some businesses to include information about potential climate-related financial risks in their financial reporting statements. After introduction, two-thirds of voters support the proposed SEC rule on climate disclosures, including 80% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 55% of Republicans. We find notable “strong” support among Democrats (37%) and limited “strong” opposition among Republicans (16%) — evidence suggesting that partisan framings of this issue have not yet been thoroughly embedded.
To understand the best arguments in support of the proposed SEC rule, we used a three-split test and randomly divided respondents into three groups, which each received a different message in favor of the proposed rule. One group’s message focused on how information on climate-related financial risks can help investors, business owners, and those planning for retirement make better investment decisions (Split A); one positioned Big Oil as a villain that is afraid that climate disclosure requirements could expose the riskiness of their industry (Split B); and one identified the SEC rule as no different from other standard transparency requirements (Split C). All respondents were provided the same message in opposition to the rule.
We find that the better investment decisions framing (Split A) and the standard transparency requirement framing (Split C) perform strongest — selected by 58% and 56% of voters, respectively. The Big Oil framing (Split B) — selected by 46% of voters — is less effective, with Republicans responding more strongly against this frame for talking about the climate disclosure rule. While less than half of Republican voters choose the opposition message in Splits A and C, that number rises to 60% for Split B. Although partisanship plays a smaller-than-normal role in shaping attitudes toward the proposed SEC climate disclosure rule, the findings of our split test indicate that exposing voters to messages seen as partisan, like attacks on Big Oil, can influence perceptions of even technical rules like this one.
As the SEC considers the release of a final version of its climate disclosure rule, this polling indicates that voters broadly support the proposed rule, and do not view it as particularly impactful in their day-to-day lives. This evidence and the results of the messaging split reflect that, while the proposed rule does not directly invoke partisan responses, including overt partisan cues, like attacking Big Oil, in messaging around the rule can influence voter perceptions of the regulation.
Grace Adcox (@GraceAdcox) is the Senior Climate Strategist at Data for Progress.