Partisan vs Climate Cues and Public Opinion about Trump’s Actions on Energy

The second Trump administration has moved to strengthen fossil fuels while limiting renewable energy, raising the possibility that its actions will further polarize public opinion on energy. In a preregistered survey experiment, I test whether a Trump cue and a climate change cue shape public support for several of the administration’s energy actions, including limiting wind and solar tax credits, keeping coal plants open, coal leasing, cancelling an offshore wind project, and shortening nuclear licensing timelines. I surveyed 3,113 respondents recruited from Cloud Research, randomly assigned to a Trump cue (actions attributed to the Trump Administration), a climate cue (linking the actions to climate change), or a control condition (actions attributed to the federal government). Testing the preregistered, directional hypotheses with one-tailed tests, I find that the Trump cue increased conservative Republicans’ support for four of the five actions. The climate cue had little effect on conservative Republicans except for eliminating tax credits, where it significantly decreased support. Liberal Democrats were largely unresponsive to the Trump cue, with a significant climate-cue effect only for the tax-credit action, and neither cue’s effects were conditioned by college education. These results suggest that Trump’s actions on energy are more likely to polarize opinion through association with Trump himself than through their connection to climate change regardless of educational attainment.