Elite Domination of Public Doubts About Climate Change (Not Evolution)

Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

“…This might help explain why highly educated and politically attentive Republicans are most skeptical about climate change, even when controlling for ideology -they are most attuned the elite debate in the media. Our findings further bolster an emerging literature on the role of elite cues in climate change polarization (Carmichael & Brulle, 2017;Guber, 2013;Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017;Tesler, 2017) and highlight the need for future scholars to focus more attention on elite cues and partisan-driven motivated reasoning.…”

“…First, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on concern over climate change is highest among those with knowledge of the issue and those that are politically attentive -in other words, those most attuned to elite debate (Guber, 2013;Tesler, 2017). Second, recent work has also shown that climate skepticism is correlated with the position of respondents' local representatives (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017), while concern about global warming ebbs and flows with policy action, such as congressional roll call votes and committee hearings (Carmichael & Brulle, 2017).…”

“…Second, recent work has also shown that climate skepticism is correlated with the position of respondents' local representatives (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017), while concern about global warming ebbs and flows with policy action, such as congressional roll call votes and committee hearings (Carmichael & Brulle, 2017). Finally, Tesler (2017) shows with an experimental manipulation that Republican attitudes to climate science would soften if their elites changed course, but that this did not apply in the case of attitudes towards evolution.…”

A Rare Moment of Cross-Partisan Consensus: Elite and Public Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada

“…Citizens "follow the leader" in part as a low-information shortcut to form opinions likely to be in line with their interests (Mondak, 1993) or to reaffirm their deeply rooted partisan identities (Bakker et al, 2019). Observational and experimental research has thus found public attitudes to be highly responsive to cues from parties (Berinsky, 2009;Lenz, 2012;Mondak, 1993), especially on novel, "hard" issues where citizens are dependent on the news media for information (Tesler, 2018;Zaller, 1992).…”

“…Polarization is often the norm on highly salient political issues, and this has been true for matters of science as well. For example, there is substantial evidence that divided political elites polarized American attitudes toward climate science (Carmichael and Brulle, 2017;Merkley and Stecula, forthcoming;Tesler, 2018). Polarization can only be avoided if elites send signals of consensus (Berinsky, 2009;Zaller, 1992).…”