Partisan Polarization and Climate Change Opinion: Canada and the U.S. Compared

• In Event: Politics and Tools of Climate Change in North America

Abstract

A great deal of research has documented the politicization of climate change in the United States (Dunlap, McCright and Yarosh, 2016; Hamilton and Saito, 2015). Due in large part to the climate change denial of the American Conservative movement, the issue is highly polarizing among the US general public (Brulle, 2014; McCright and Dunlap, 2003; 2010; Dunlap and Jacques, 2013). Some studies even suggest that the United States is an outlier among advanced democratic countries in terms of relatively low levels of public belief regarding the existence of anthropogenic global warming (Leiserowitz et al., 2021). However, climate change has also been politicized in other parts of the advanced democratic world, including Canada, where climate change and related issues around decarbonization and carbon taxes have featured prominently in hotly contested election campaigns featuring heated partisan debate on the issue. In this study, we draw on two longitudinal data sets featuring several identical measures of public attitudes toward climate change, and examine opinion dynamics in Canada and the United States over the ten year period spanning 2011 to 2021. We show that, despite large and enduring differences in public attitudes toward climate change in the two neighboring federations, problem perceptions in the United States are catching up to levels observed in Canada. Moreover, we compare opinion dynamics and demonstrate that partisanship structures Canadian public opinion on climate change in a way that is similar to what is found in the United States. Despite this partisan-fuelled polarization, we show that the salience of climate change as a political problem is rising in both countries, especially in Canada, and among left-leaning voters.

Authors

• Christopher P. Borick, Muhlenberg College

• Erick Lachapelle, Universite de Montreal