Half of U.S. Conservatives Say Climate Change Is Real

by Eric Roston (Bloomberg) Trump and Cruz reject global warming, while more Republicans see it as a threat. -- The percentage of conservative Republicans who consider global warming a threat shot up 19 points in two years, to 47 percent, according to public opinion researchers at Yale University and George Mason University. Overall, 56 percent of Republicans agree that it’s happening. Including Democrats and independents, the national average for the U.S. is 73 percent.

The new survey results, “Politics & Global Warming 2016,” suggest a growing gap between what most registered Republican voters understand to be true and what the party leadership says it believes, particularly on the presidential campaign trail this year. READ MORE Report (Yale Program on Climate Change Communication)