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Will Climate Voters Turn Out in Pennsylvania?

Interviews across this crucial swing state offer lessons for Democrats hoping to flip the House.

An estimated thousand rally and march for climate change in Philadelphia on September 20, 2019, as tens of thousands across the nation and millions globally participate in the Climate Strike.

“Are you part of the 89 percent?”

A team of Covering Climate Now reporters traveled through eastern Pennsylvania last week asking people that question, exploring what residents of that quintessential battleground state think about climate change and the fast-approaching midterm elections. Pennsylvanians had just endured a brutal heat wave that scientists said would have been “virtually impossible” absent global warming. Temperatures in Philadelphia hit 103º Fahrenheit, leading authorities to cancel the Fourth of July parade.

Pennsylvania is central to Democrats’ hopes of winning the US House of Representatives in November and putting a brake on Donald Trump’s one-party rule. Four of the 35 seats Democratic strategists have identified as opportunities to flip from red to blue are in Pennsylvania. Trump won the state by a narrow marginin 2024—a mere 120,000 votes out of 7 million cast—and his underwater approval ratings today figure to bolster Democrats’ chances.

Our 89 percent question referred to the 80 to 89 percent supermajority of people around the world who want their governments to “do more” about climate change. That’s according to Gallup’s annual global mega-poll, as analyzed by scholars in the eminent scientific journal Nature Climate Change. Separate studies by Oxford University, the European Commission, and others found similar levels of support. Crucially, the studies also found that the supermajorities in most countries do not realize they are a supermajority; instead, they think they are a minority.

Shedding further light on Pennsylvanians’ views, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication recently released survey data measuring Americans’ views about global warming and what they think governments and corporations should do about it. The data covers the entire United States but is also broken down by state, county, and congressional district. For example, 63 percent of all Americans are “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about global warming, whereas the number in Pennsylvania is 61 percent and in neighboring New Jersey it is 71 percent.

Our interviews with a diverse collection of Pennsylvanians broadly confirmed these scholarly findings, though with important caveats. For example, Joe, a retired schoolteacher in Philadelphia, estimated that only “15 to 20 percent” of people want stronger climate action. (For electoral privacy reasons, this article will not use the last names of interviewees.) “Maybe we’re not doing a good enough job of communicating the dangers for people’s kids and grandkids,” he added.

To be clear, the size of the climate supermajority varies by country. In the United States, the percentage is lower, at 74 percent. No surprise, really, considering that the United States is the world’s oldest........

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