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Welcome back to the Data for Progress newsletter, your weekly update on our research, blog posts, and memos.
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It might have been Earth Day (and 4/20 #LegalizeIt) this week, but here at DFP it’s Earth Day every day! This week, we released a set of plans outlining the status of Biden’s action on climate so far in his presidency and how he can go even further.
Our memos lay out the path for three different ways Biden can pursue a progressive climate innovation agenda: through executive action, via a jobs and infrastructure package, and by passing brand-new authorizing legislation expanding the powers of Congress to be sufficient to tackle the climate crisis. We also created a handy-dandy fact sheet detailing which parts of the progressive climate innovation agenda have already made their way into legislation pushed by Biden and Congressional Democrats.
And what’s more: the progressive climate innovation agenda is as popular as it is urgently needed. In March, we polled a sample of likely national voters on their attitudes towards increasing climate funding, the government taking more action on reducing emissions, and making sure climate investments center racial and economic justice. We found that all of these proposals receive strong bipartisan support, including reducing emissions from “heavy industries” like shipping and manufacturing, enabling all sectors of the government to collaborate on reducing emissions, and developing technology that helps communities on the front lines of pollution.
Here are some other highlights from DFP over the past week:
Green New Deal With It
This week, Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez re-introduced the Green New Deal — and we have new polling out which shows that despite Republicans’ attempted smears, the Green New Deal continues to be extremely popular, with voters supporting it by a +31 margin.
Moreover, the individual components of the Green New Deal are exciting to voters too: we found that every single major plank of the GND is supported by a strong majority of voters. The most popular sub-sections of the GND are making utilities cheaper, reducing pollution, implementing sustainable farming practices, and modernizing infrastructure to be more energy-efficient.
Green jobs for all!
In addition to re-introducing their Green New Deal, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey also introduced legislation to establish a Civilian Climate Corps, a program which would put 1.5 million Americans to work over the next five years in federally-funded projects to tackle climate change, revitalize America’s public lands and waters, and transition to a clean energy economy. We asked voters about their opinions on the CCC and found that 65% of all likely national voters support it — a strong majority consistent across partisanship, age, and urbanicity.
Climate Goes Global
That’s not all of DFP’s work on climate this week! In honor of Biden’s international climate summit with other world leaders, we released a brand-new poll with Climate Power on Americans’ attitudes towards international climate action. We found that voters don’t agree with narratives portraying foreign policy as a zero-sum game when it comes to climate: a strong majority of voters, 76 percent, want the U.S. to work with other countries to tackle climate change, including a majority of Democrats (90 percent), Independents (76 percent), and Republicans (61 percent). Additionally, a majority of voters (70 percent) agree America should lead the world by taking ambitious climate actions and encouraging other nations to follow our lead.
DFP x Congressman Mondaire Jones
This week, we were excited to have Rep. Mondaire Jones on the blog along with Demand Justice Executive Director Brian Fallon to make the case for expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court to 13. Our polling indicates that voters support expanding the Supreme Court by a margin of +6 points — as Rep. Jones and Brian note, this strong support for an idea that is new to many people indicates that organizing and messaging can grow support for Supreme Court expansion by leaps and bounds.
Who’s Winning in TX-06? The Democratic Agenda
In addition to our issue polling and message testing, this week DFP also released a horse-race poll on the special election in Texas’s 6th Congressional District. We found that although the highest polling candidate in the race by 8 points is currently a Republican, Democratic priorities such as providing pandemic relief through the American Rescue Plan and opposing voter suppression laws are very popular with TX-06 voters.
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