What do Americans believe caused the recent wildfires?
On the heels of record breaking wildfires in California, Colorado is experiencing its second largest wildfire in state history. Our recent Politics and Election 2020 Survey offers unique insight into how the public views these unprecedented fires.
Specifically, these divisions appear to fall along partisan lines. 65% of Democrats attribute the prolific wildfires to climate change, in stark contrast to the mere 9% of Republicans who do so. Although Republicans are largely united in their rejection of climate change as the cause of these fires, they remain divided as to what they think is to blame.
Around one third of Republicans align with the Trump administration’s position that the wildfires are a result of forest management practices, and a little over half credit the fires to either natural causes or the actions of individuals. Independents were similarly divided on what they saw as the cause of the destructive blazes, but were far more likely to consider climate change and less likely to point to forest management as the culprit than were Republicans.
As experts warn that vast, destructive fires like these will likely become commonplace in the coming years, policymakers will need to confront these partisan divisions as they determine strategies to prevent and confront natural disasters in the future.
Methodology: Reality Check Insights' Politics and the Election 2020 was conducted from Sept. 23 – Oct. 7 (N=1,473; MOE ±4.7%). Respondents were recruited through both random address-based sampling (where respondents completed interviews either online (via smart phone or computer) or by calling a toll-free number) and opt-in sampling through online advertising (with all interviews completed online). Each sample was weighted separately according to population benchmarks of age, race and ethnicity, gender, education, region, voter registration status, and partisanship before being combined for analysis. The margin of error was computed using the classical simple random sampling formula with an adjustment for the estimated design effect due to weighting. Politics and the Election 2020 is part of a broader survey, State of America II, conducted by Reality Check Insights.
Photo: "Wildfire" by USFWS/Southeast is marked under CC PDM 1.0