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In Climate Insights 2020: Overall Trends, we showed that huge majorities of Americans believe that the earth has been warming due to human activity and that governments, businesses, and individuals should take steps to address it. In Climate Insights 2020: Policies and Politics, we described how large—and sometimes huge—majorities of Americans favor various policies for mitigating future global warming. Similarly widespread support for specific government policies to reduce the risks of wildfires and floods, and to help people cope with damage from wildfires and floods, was documented in Climate Insights 2020: Natural Disasters.

These huge majorities in favor of adaptation and mitigation policies, as documented in those reports, cannot be achieved without many Democrats, Independents, and Republicans agreeing.

And when majorities of the major parties agree, policymakers can pursue those policies knowing that many of their constituents are on the same side. In this report, we assess the degree to which majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans agree on various aspects of global warming in 2020. We then use data from prior surveys in our series to track changes in the partisan gap over the past two decades.

During the past four years, American partisans have become increasingly contemptuous of their opponents. According to national surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center between 2016 and 2019, Democrats have become increasingly likely to give Republicans a “cold” rating on a “feeling thermometer,” which is thought to reflect attitudes. And during those years, Republicans have become increasingly likely to give Democrats a cold rating (Pew Oct. 2019).