Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is making man-made climate change a cornerstone of his 2020 presidential candidacy.
For many Democrats, it is an issue near to their heart. According to a Pew Research Center poll taken last year, 75% of Democrats say human activity is causing climate change. All the major Democratic candidates concur.
The challenge for Inslee will be launching a successful presidential campaign on climate change. Inslee starts in the very low single-digits in the polls, and climate change is not the issue Democrats are most concerned about. This isn’t 2008 when Barack Obama made opposition to the Iraq War central to his campaign and it was a defining issue for voters.
Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center asked Americans what they think a top priority should be for President Donald Trump and Congress in 2019. A majority of Democrats, 67%, said climate change. Yet, Democrats ranked five other issues ahead of it. That signals Democrats are interested in the issue, but they are interested in a lot of issues and climate change isn’t necessarily at the top of their agenda.
Gallup continuously asks voters what the most important problem is in the country. Issues such as the economy, healthcare and immigration have all regularly topped the list. Nothing related to climate change (such as the environment, which is considerably broader than climate change) regularly rings at 5% or higher, even among Democrats.
Last year, climate change was not an issue on which many Democrats based their vote choice. Just 17% of Democrats said that global warming was one of the most important issues in their vote for Congress, according to an October ABC News/Washington Post poll. That was certainly higher than border security (5%), but lagged behind healthcare (25%) and reducing divisions between people and groups in this country (25%).
Suffolk University asked the question slightly differently by inquiring what the single most important issue was for voters. Only 2% of Democrats said the environment, which is considerably broader than just climate change. Almost every other issue was ranked ahead of it, though no issue hit above 14% (healthcare).
Of course, the fact that no issue really stood out is perhaps the biggest signal: the Democratic nominee probably won’t define his or her candidacy around a single issue in 2020. Beyond their desire to stop President Donald Trump, there really isn’t one thing that stands out in the polling for Democratic voters’ priorities. Democrats have a slate of issues that interest them right now.
That doesn’t mean that a candidacy defined by climate change would be useless for Inslee. Not only could he end up raising the importance of the issue among Democrats, those who worry about climate change have a lot work to do with the general electorate.
Despite a scientific consensus that the Earth is warming because of human activity, only a bare majority (53%) of Americans think that it is. Just 26% of Republicans believe it is.
Among all Americans, climate change is one of the least important priorities. Pew found that 44% of Americans think climate change should be a top priority for Trump and the Congress in 2019. That was the second lowest of any issue. For Republicans, it was the lowest, coming in at 21%.
The bottom line is that Inslee has his work cut out of him. The voters who agree with him have other issues that are also pressing, while many in the middle don’t even agree with Inslee on his basic premise. But, as I said, maybe Inslee will be successful simply by raising the issue of climate change.
