This report summarizes a recent survey of residents of Florida, Massachusetts, and Maine to assess their attitudes and beliefs regarding climate change and climate change policy.From the Introduction:"This document reports the results of three surveys conducted in Florida, Massachusetts, and Maine from July 9 through 18, 2010, to measure attitudes and beliefs on climate change, and compares the results of those surveys to survey data collected in those states between 2006 and 2010 and with a national survey conducted in June, 2010.The topics addressed in the survey include:• Whether global warming has been happening• What might have caused global warming• Whether global warming will be undesirable• The personal importance of the global warming issue• What government should and should not do on the issue• Expected economic consequences of mitigation efforts• Willingness to pay for mitigation efforts• The impact of a political candidate making a statement about global warming on his/her likely electoral success in a U.S. Senate race.The principal findings are:• The three states resemble one another and the nation, in that large majorities of all believe that global warming has been happening, is human caused, will be problematic, and should be addressed by government.• An experiment suggests that if a candidate running for U.S. Senate campaigns endorsed the views held on this issue by the majorities of the States’ residents, the proportion of citizens voting for the candidate could increase by 24 percentage points in Florida, 7 percentage points in Main, and 9 percentage points in Massachusetts. The impact of the statement about global warming on vote intentions was greatest among Democrats, less among Independents, and non- existent among Republicans."

Ana Villar and Jon A. Krosnick

Woods Institute for the Environment (Stanford University), Stanford, CA: August 2010

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