Bloomberg has commented that climate change could be a core variable in the U.S. presidential election.
It also presented survey analysis data suggesting that voters who consider climate change a significant criterion for presidential voting influenced the defeat of the Republican candidate.
On the 22nd (local time), Bloomberg commented that voters who feel anxious about global warming could vote against Trump in the November 2024 United States presidential election.
The comment cited the survey analysis results of the Center for Social and Environmental Futures (CSEF) at the University of Colorado Boulder, which surveyed 4,513 U.S. voters.
According to the analysis, the Democratic Party received 3% more votes than the Republican Party in the 2020 election due to the issue of climate change.
Bloomberg pointed out that the 3% vote difference was “enough to elect President Joe Biden.”
In the 2020 election, it was counted that the voters who placed significant emphasis on climate change in their vote were 67%, which is two-thirds of all voters.
They answered that climate change was “somewhat important” or “very important,” and 77% reportedly voted for Biden.
In Gallup’s 2023 related survey, Bloomberg also reported that 61% of American adults said they “quite” worry about climate change.
This suggests that a similar trend may appear in the following election.
Bloomberg pointed out that “the anxiety of U.S. voters about global warming could have been a reason for hindering the re-election success of Trump in 2020” and “the same thing could happen in 2024”.
Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, immediately pursued rejoining the Paris Agreement upon taking office in 2021.
The Paris Agreement, which Trump withdrew in his first year of office in 2017, is an international agreement to zero net greenhouse gas emissions so that the earth’s average temperature does not rise more than 2 degrees, preferably not more than 1.5 degrees, compared to pre-industrialization.
The energy policies of the two former and current presidents are also significantly different. While Trump showed a positive attitude towards traditional fossil fuel industries, Biden is proactive in eco-friendly energy policies, such as achieving carbon neutrality in the U.S. by 2050.
If Trump is elected, it is predicted that U.S. policies responding to the climate crisis will retreat again.
According to Politico, a political journal, Trump’s aides have said that if he is elected president, they are planning a “full-fledged war on climate science and related policies.”
Bloomberg added that even within the Republican Party in the U.S., there is a movement among younger party members wanting to respond actively to climate change.
The U.S. Republican Party currently holds a primary to select the party’s presidential candidate. The race has narrowed to a two-way race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley following the recent resignation of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who was one of the leading candidates.
The research results released by CSEF were posted on Zenodo, a preprint-sharing platform operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), on January 17.
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