A new study released by the University of Michigan confirmed results of a 2009 poll conducted by Public Religion Research on behalf of Faith in Public Life and Oxfam America.
The Michigan study found:
Republicans were less likely to endorse that the phenomenon [of global climate change] is real when it was referred to as “global warming” (44.0%) rather than “climate change” (60.2%), whereas Democrats were unaffected by question wording (86.9% vs. 86.4%). As a result, the partisan divide on the issue dropped from 42.9 percentage points under a “global warming” frame to 26.2 percentage points under a “climate change” frame.
Similarly, our survey, which was released in May 2009, found that 36% of Republicans believe climate change is an ‘extremely’ important or ‘very’ important issue compared to only 23% of Republicans who said ‘global warming’ was extremely or very important. There was no significant difference among Democrats.
For more on the Public Religion Research poll, click here.