FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Even conservative Republicans like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, poll says

That pesky Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her wild ideas — that most people like.
A new poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows strong bipartisan support for the Green New Deal.

That pesky Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her wild ideas — that most people like.

A new poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows strong bipartisan support for the Green New Deal, a plan to rapidly decarbonize the U.S. economy by investing in green infrastructure and jobs that has been championed by Congresswoman-elect Ocasio-Cortez.

Eighty-one percent of respondents, regardless of their political ideology, said they either “somewhat” or “strongly” support the progressive climate change policy proposal. Three-quarters of moderate Republicans said they supported a Green New Deal, and 57 percent of conservative Republicans said that they, too, were in favor of the idea. An overwhelming amount of Democrats, at 92 percent, support the Green New Deal, along with 88 percent of independents. It's worth noting, however, that the poll has a relatively low sample size.

Advertisement

“Turns out, everyday people like it when we fight for everyday people!” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the poll.

Notably, pollsters did not mention Ocasio-Cortez — who has became Fox News’ favorite example of a leftist boogeyman — by name when asking voters about their support of the Green New Deal. The pollsters said that “very few people had heard about it.” People are prone to respond less favorably when they learn that a policy is supported by someone of the opposing political party, so it’s likely that the issue will become more partisan going forward.

Ocasio-Cortez became the most prominent supporter of a Green New Deal when she joined a sit-in staged by Sunrise Movement activists at Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s office in mid-November to demand Democrats take more aggressive action against climate change.

That same day, Ocasio-Cortez proposed that Democratic leadership create a select committee to form more detailed policy ideas to decarbonize the economy, which more Democrats have joined in recent weeks.

Cover image: Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won her bid for a seat in the House of Representatives in New York's 14th Congressional District, asks 2014 Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai a question at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)