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New polling conducted by HarrisX and commissioned by Americans for Tax Reform reveals voters are unwilling to pay more in taxes to “address climate change.”

Voters indicated by a 16-point margin that they’re unwilling to pay more in taxes if revenue would be used to address climate change, with 58 percent responding they were not willing to raise taxes compared to 42 percent who were. 

Intensity of voter opposition was also apparent in the polling, signaling further trouble for Biden’s infrastructure plan. Intensity of preference was heavily skewed towards those unwilling to raise taxes, with 35 percent of respondents “very not willing” to raise taxes to address climate change compared to only 11 percent who were “very willing” to raise taxes.  This gap only grew among key demographics with only 9 percent of independents and 7 percent of suburban voters “very willing” to raise taxes.

The findings reveal a blind spot for the Biden administration as it proposes raising trillions of dollars in new tax revenue to fund an infrastructure package heavily composed of “green” spending programs taken from the framework of the Green New Deal.

Conservative criticism of Biden’s tax hikes are likely to carry weight as Republican lawmakers draw the public’s attention to wasteful spending of Biden’s Green New Deal programs and the proposed tax increases required to pay for them.

Poll respondents were asked the following:    

Would you be willing or not willing to pay more in taxes to address climate change?  

  • Very willing  

  • Somewhat willing  

  • Somewhat not willing  

  • Very not willing  

Only 42 percent of respondents indicated that they were willing, while 58 percent of respondents indicated that they were not willing. Specifically, 11 percent of respondents were very willing, 31 percent of respondents were somewhat willing, 23 percent of respondents were somewhat not willing, and 35 percent of respondents were very not willing.   

The poll was conducted by HarrisX overnight online survey between March 31 to April 6 among 4,577 registered voters. The margin of error of this poll is plus or minus 1.45 percent and the results reflect a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults weighted for age by gender, region, race/ethnicity, and income where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.  

Below is a demographic breakdown of the results: 

  • Only 20 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of Joe Biden voters, and 23 percent of urban residents indicated that they would be “very willing” to pay more in taxes to address climate change.  
     
  • 79 percent of Republicans, 36 percent of Democrats, and 59 percent of independents are not willing to pay more in taxes to address climate change.  
     
  • 63 percent of suburban voters and 73 percent of rural voters are not willing to pay more in taxes to address climate change.  

These findings should be instructive to lawmakers as President Biden and other Democrats consider tax increases with the intentions of paying for wasteful climate initiatives.  

The polling results can be found here.