President Joe Biden is spending more than $1 trillion on his climate agenda, but it does not seem to be resonating at all with voters in battleground states, according to new polling from The Wall Street Journal.
Only 2% of registered voters surveyed named climate change as the most important issue in the 2024 election, compared to 25% who identified immigration as the top issue and 22% who indicated that the economy was their top concern, according to the WSJ’s poll. The White House has touted Biden’s massive green agenda as “the most ambitious climate, conservation, and environmental justice agenda” in U.S. history.
The WSJ surveyed 2,100 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the seven states that most pundits believe will determine whether or not Biden gets a second term — between March 17 and March 24. The poll has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill, contains subsidies for green energy that could ultimately cost about $1.2 trillion, according to estimates published by Goldman Sachs. Beyond the IRA, the administration has spent and regulated aggressively to push electric vehicles (EVs) on Americans, promulgated stringent rules to reshape the American power grid and rejoined the United Nations’ Paris Climate Accords after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement.
The results of the WSJ’s poll appear to align with a similar poll conducted by MWR Strategies that found only 3% of swing state voters identified climate change as the most important problem America faces.
While Biden’s climate agenda may not be hitting home for voters, environmentalist groups have largely applauded Biden’s policies on the issue, typically criticizing him only when he is perceived to have not gone far enough from a policy perspective. Major environmental groups, their war chests and their activist voters figure to be key sources of support for Biden as election day draws closer.
The Biden campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
