Trump’s denialism could harm him, study says – 01/20/2024 – World

A study led by political scientist Mathew Burgess, from the University of Colorado (USA), found that concerns about climate change had a significant and growing effect on the last US presidential elections. The survey also shows that the issue has favored Democratic politicians and may have even cost Donald Trump his defeat in the 2020 election.

The researchers’ projection points out that Trump could have obtained 3% more votes in the last presidential election if he had shown greater concern about the climate crisis, which could have given him victory in the dispute against Joe Biden.

In 2020, a third of Republican voters who considered climate change “very important” voted Democrat. The number, Burgess told the American website Semafor, represents only around 3.5% of the total number of Republican voters, but in a close election it could make a difference. This year, “it seems likely that [o assunto] harm him [Trump] again”, adds the researcher.

The study was carried out analyzing survey data on the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. One of the findings is that one of the strongest predictive factors for vote choice is exactly the candidates’ opinion on climate change.

Although the analysis shows that the issue is considered important for the majority of Americans (two-thirds), only 10% of voters consider climate change to be their main concern. A minority is willing to accept the costs, such as higher electricity rates, of a policy to curb global warming, according to the Semafor publication.

In this way, analysts point out that it could be risky for Biden to bet on the issue in his re-election campaign.

During his tenure as president, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, the main global initiative to curb climate change. The commitment made by the country was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025. The Barack Obama government was one of the guarantors of the treaty.

At the time, Trump stated that the withdrawal represented a “reaffirmation of American sovereignty”, since, in his reading, the agreement “paralyzes the USA while empowering some of the most polluting nations in the world”. In 2021, under Biden’s administration, the country officially returned to the Paris Agreement.

Trump is the target of several criminal and civil lawsuits, something that apparently does not shake his supporters, but could also hinder the Republican in the electoral race. For now, he alternates rallies with court appearances, as happened this week, with his appearance at a civil trial in New York to respond to the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexual violence.

Confirming expectations, Trump won the first battle for the Republican nomination in the race for the White House on Monday (15), in Iowa. With more than 95% of the votes counted, the former president had obtained 51% of the votes — the highest percentage garnered by a candidate in a party dispute.

The distance to Ron DeSantis, who had 21.2% of the votes, was practically 30 percentage points. In third place was Nikki Haley, with 19.1% of the votes.