Memo: Climate Change is a Key Wedge Issue for Winning Over Persuadable Trump Voters
By Brian Schaffner Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies, Tufts University, Laurel Bliss Research Assistant, Tufts University, and Sean McElwee Executive Director, Data for Progress
Executive Summary:
According to the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, approximately 10% of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 are now at least considering voting Democratic in 2020. These voters are overwhelmingly younger; nearly one-third are under 45 years old. We find similar estimates from the VOTER survey, which we also analyze here.
Using a machine learning approach, we find that climate issues are the best predictor of whether a Trump voter is considering voting for the Democratic nominee in 2020. Trump voters who care more about climate issues and take more progressive positions on climate policies are significantly more likely to be considering voting for the Democratic nominee in 2020.
Trump voters who think climate change is an important issue are much more likely to be persuadable in 2020. Across 23 issues, none predicted persuadability among Trump voters better than climate change.
11% of those who voted for Trump in 2016 take a liberal position on at least four out of five climate-related issues that they were asked about. Over half of that group is considering voting Democratic in 2020.
Persuadable Trump voters are much closer to the Democratic base than the Trump base on the climate issues we asked about. This was not necessarily the case on other issues.
Trump voters who are persuadable in 2020 and who rate climate change as an important issue rate Biden more favorably, on average, than Trump. These voters are clearly winnable in 2020 and climate change appears is a major reason they are considering abandoning Trump.
