Party gap on environment-economic growth tradeoff widens to record in Gallup survey

The gap between the parties in prioritizing the environment or economic growth reached a new record in the latest Gallup survey. 

Gallup reported on Thursday that 78 percent of Democrats believe the country should prioritize the environment over economic growth, while only 20 percent of Republicans do. The 58-point gap between those two figures is the largest since the polling firm began tracking responses to the question in 1984. 

Similar amounts of Democrats and Republicans initially agreed on the question, including in 1991 when 73 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans said the country should prioritize the environment. But a divide began by 1995 and has increasingly expanded since then. 

A majority of Democrats have indicated they support prioritizing the environment in most years of the poll except for the years around the Great Recession, while a majority of Republicans have not said the environment should be prioritized since the start of the century. 

Pollsters for the most recent poll found 54 percent of independents also said they support prioritizing the environment, in line with the past few years but down from the 71 percent who said so in 2019. 

The poll found almost three-quarters of Republicans, four in 10 independents and almost 20 percent of Democrats said the economy should be prioritized over the environment. The 57-point gap between Democrats and Republicans on this question is also the largest ever recorded in the poll’s history. 

Pollsters found overall that 52 percent of Americans believe the country should prioritize the environment, while 43 percent said it should focus on economic growth. Most Americans have said the environment should be prioritized more in every year the poll was taken except for those during and following the Great Recession, from 2009 to 2013. 

Gallup said in its analysis of the poll that the environment has increasingly become an area of partisan divide in the country, unlike during the early 1990s when both parties mostly agreed on the issue. 

Gallup said the consensus changed after the 1994 midterm elections that saw the GOP take control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years, a possible backlash to policies from then-President Bill Clinton and a Democratic-controlled Congress. 

It said the parties have fallen on different sides of the debate since then, including instances like the Keystone XL pipeline, fracking, oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the use of electric vehicles. 

The poll was conducted from March 1 to 23 among 1,0009 adults. The margin of error was 4 points.