Democrats shouldn’t focus on ‘climate change’

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.

This year has started as the hottest on record. In the United States, the average temperature for the first four months of 2026 was 44.8 degrees, a height unmatched in data that goes back to 1895. But as climate change wreaks havoc at home and abroad, why don’t Americans care that much?

Well, they do care—just maybe not that much about “climate change.”

Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say protecting the environment is important, according to a YouGov poll from March. And 62% tell the Pew Research Center that the U.S. and other nations are not doing enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And yet, despite that near-universal concern, only 5% call “climate change and the environment” their most important issue, per the latest Economist/YouGov survey. 

The economy and inflation are far and away Americans’ greatest concerns, though climate change heavily affects those issues. For instance, a warmer planet means greater use of air-conditioning, which, in turn, means higher electric bills. Droughts and intense storms, both exacerbated by global warming, are raising water bills. Climate change is a pocketbook issue, but Americans struggle to make the connection.

That struggle is highlighted by a February poll from Data for Progress and the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank. 

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact.

But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. 

In fact, the share who said those issues “greatly” affected cost of living (34%) was nearly double the amount who said the same about climate change (19%).

“Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts.

Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

For example, last year, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied thousands on a speaking tour. Their message of battling corruption and pushing for an economic revolution to benefit the working class has serious national appeal, even in red areas, where the tour sometimes ventured. However, that tour’s name was not “Fighting Corruption,” “Fighting for the Working Class,” or even “Fighting the 1%.” 

It was “Fighting Oligarchy.” 

Yes, the word may perfectly describe the Trump administration: “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” But it’s also a word that begs a definition, and it’s coming from a party that has bled support among those without a college degree, a group that makes up a sizable majority of the presidential electorate.

The Democratic presidential candidate has lost support with non-college-educated voters in each election since 2012, according to left-leaning data firm Catalist. It’s dropped across every racial group, with Democratic support falling by more than 10 percentage points since 2012 among Black, Latino, and AAPI voters without a college diploma.

Clearly, the star power of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez overcame that unwieldy word. But ideally, Democrats would not need to overcome their own messaging at all. 

A good counterpoint comes from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, he is a democratic socialist dead-set on taking on corporate interests and aiding the working class. But he isn’t tossing out many SAT words.

Instead, during last year’s mayoral campaign, he talked relentlessly about cost-of-living issues. His primary policy planks were two- or three-word phrases: freeze the rent, free buses, build affordable housing, no-cost childcare, and more. He messaged about the cost-of-living crisis with tangible, everyday examples, like the soaring prices found at the city’s ubiquitous halal food trucks—and how he’d fix it. Wittily, he termed that particular issue “halaflation.”

As a result, Mamdani built a young, multiracial, and multicultural coalition. In the general election, he blew out his opponent Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat-turned-independent, in majority-Black and -Hispanic precincts. Seventy-five percent of voters ages 18 to 29 backed him. And even after 100 days in office, which he hit in early April, his approval rating was still 18 points above water, according to a Marist poll.

Mamdani’s simple, relentless, and tangible messaging should be the blueprint for how Democrats, moderates and lefties alike, talk about every issue—including climate change. 

While most Americans may not need to consult Webster for what climate change means, they also clearly do not recognize the breadth of its effects on their daily lives. It’s in the tornados that down their power lines, in the floods that damage their homes, and in the droughts that make their groceries more expensive.

Focusing on those things—the specifics, not the broad idea of the climate crisis—are how Democrats can win with their messaging.

Any updates?

• Conservatives’ war on the LGBTQ+ community is continuing to erode public support for same-sex marriage, new polling from Gallup finds. After support peaked in 2021-2022, at 71%, it has now slipped to 65%. The erosion comes almost entirely from Republicans. Their support for same-sex marriage hit 55% in 2022, but now it’s just 35%. 

Vibe check

As summer heats up, it’s important to stay cool—a different kind of cool. And when it comes to whom Americans see as the nation’s coolest public figures, politics play a big role.

In April, YouGov fielded a poll asking Americans how cool they found 36 public figures and groups. The coolest? Actor Samuel L. Jackson. Forty-one percent consider him “very cool,” and another 31% say he’s “somewhat cool.” Only 12% consider him “not very cool” or “not at all cool.”

In other words, he’s not polarizing. Who is polarizing? Former President Barack Obama. Thirty-four percent consider him “very cool,” while 25% say he’s “not at all cool.” That puts him at the top of our Daily Kos Coolness Polarization Index.™️ (As with our previous polarization indexes on food and horror movies, you can find the methodology in the chart’s footnote.)

Also polarizing: Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, and Bruce Springsteen—all four of which endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. That’s carried over to 2026, leading to relatively large shares of Americans—namely, Republicans—to say those megastars aren’t the bee’s knees, BeyHive or not. (Notably, Jackson also endorsed Harris, though that doesn’t seem to have clung to his image in quite the same way.)

That said, even some outright political figures aren’t that polarizing.

Only 12% of Americans think President Donald Trump is “very cool.” Brutally, that includes just 30% of Republicans. Meanwhile, most Americans (53%) say he’s “not cool at all.”