Political elites’ partisan beliefs about climate change

Abstract Addressing climate change requires political elites to share a basic set of facts about climate science, yet political elites in the United States are divided in their views about climate change. We document this using the first large-scale survey of over 3,500 U.S. political elites—including elected officials, staffers, regulators, lobbyists, and policy professionals—to assess the partisan divide in beliefs about climate change held by political elites. We show near-unanimous agreement among the Democratic elite on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, primarily caused by humans, and widely recognized by scientists. In contrast, substantial minorities of Republican elites reject these scientific facts, with fewer than half affirming anthropogenic climate change and nearly one-third endorsing a climate-related conspiracy theory. Comparing elites to the general public, we find that political elites are more aligned with climate science, but partisan gaps among elites are as wide as those observed in mass opinion. Regression analyses show partisan identity explains far more variation in elite climate beliefs than ideology, trust in science, or broader conspiratorial predispositions. These findings suggest that partisan polarization among elites reflects not only strategic electoral behavior but also privately held attitudes.