Climate Sock

It’s been two years since a long day’s cycling in Andalucia produced the thought that a lot of unfounded speculation is spouted about public opinion on climate change. The idea was born of  a website about what people really think about the environment.

Who still cares about the climate?

In those two years, we’ve heard repeated claims that people are becoming less worried about climate change. The UEA email release – Climategate – has been blamed, though after trial may well have been innocent.

And despite some attempts to hype up the change in mood, opinion seemed to bounce back to near where it had been before.

So if it wasn’t UEA – or indeed Glaciergate – that changed people’s minds, perhaps it was the cold winters. And so perhaps the next one might do the same.

But on the other hand, maybe it was all down to the economy that had made climate change a relatively low priority.

Indeed perhaps all this is a misdiagnosis of people’s boredom with the argument between two rival camps. Just because they say they’re sick of the argument doesn’t mean they’re not worried about climate change.

Campaigns and politics

So all isn’t lost for climate change campaigners. People would even go along with higher environmental taxes in some situations (not that these are necessarily the answer). But making climate change about cute animals misses the mark, at least in the short term.

But there’s still work to do to show why climate change is a tangible environmental problem, though connecting with worries about an energy shortage doesn’t seem to be the answer.

We’ve seen the need to learn the lessons of professional communications campaigns, as well – perhaps – as from a couple of unexpected NGOs. And above all, campaigners need to avoid letting governments be seen as the only ones dealing with climate change.

Talking of politics, the 2010 election presented some interesting challenges for the major parties. We saw Caroline Lucas elected as a Green MP, and relatively strong prospects for the Greens to win more seats. Though outside Brighton, the last election wasn’t great for them, despite fighting some interesting battles.

In Australia, talking about climate change seems to have become ever more of a contact sport and was kept out of the general election, which yielded more challenges for the Greens. But despite the ferocity, it looks like climate change is still a major worry for Australians.

Energy and energy disasters

It’s been two years of environmental calamities that have caused only minor tremors on the polling charts.

The Gulf of Mexico spill wreaked environmental havoc but hardly revolutionised US attitudes to off-shore drilling. Fukushima also didn’t cause much of a stir in views of nuclear power, at least in the US and UK.

At least the nuclear disaster did remind us how much the nuclear industry like polling (a lot, and they really aren’t afraid to use it). Which is a little odd, because the best their polls ever show is nuclear being grudgingly accepted.

Good polls and bad polls

And the constant backdrop to all the numbers has been the twin frustrations of good polls being badly reported, and bad polls being unquestioningly reported.

Even the good guys sometimes do bad polls, and the way polls are reported can do a lot to fix the problem. But that doesn’t always happen and that’s why there’s still a need for nerds to check the data.

Thank you so much for reading and for your comments and suggestions. I’ll be announcing changes to Climate Sock soon, which I hope will provide the basis for more number crunching and opinion checking.

Now UK electoral reform for the Commons has been defeated, First Past the Post (FPTP) is with us for the foreseeable future. I was never convinced that Alternative Vote (AV) would be a game changer for smaller parties like the Greens, but FPTP is particularly bad for them.

There’s no doubt that FPTP exaggerates results. Below a certain share of the national vote, parties get fewer seats than they would under a PR system. Above that level, they get more.

Yet the UK Greens do have one MP, and they are in fact less hard done by under FPTP than the other UK-wide parties of similar size: the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the British National Party (BNP).

In the 2010 election, the Greens nationally won 286k votes (1.0%); UKIP won 920k (3.1%); and the BNP 564k (1.9%). Yet of the three, the Greens were the only party to win a seat, despite receiving the fewest votes (although this one seat was itself equivalent to only about one sixth of the seats they would have won under a fully proportionate system with that share of the vote).

So, why was this the case, and what does it say about the Greens’ prospects under FPTP?

To win a seat in a multi-way marginal, a party typically needs at least 30%. Caroline Lucas won Brighton Pavilion with 31% of the vote; the next target for the Greens, Norwich South, was won by the Lib Dems with 29%. Other Green targets were won with slightly higher proportions.

Yet, with a lower national share than UKIP and the BNP, explanation is needed for why the Greens were able to mobilise 31% in a particular constituency, while the others were not able to do so.

At least part of the answer is suggested by the huge poll conducted by Michael Ashcroft for the Tories.

A key source for this debate is the question on how likely respondents are to vote for particular parties. A response of 1 signifies that they will definitely not vote for that party, and 10 means that they will definitely vote for that party.

The proportions who say they are extremely likely (let’s say 9 or 10) to vote for each of the three parties is roughly what we’d expect: small, and similar to one another.

But the differences are very interesting when we look lower down the scale:

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With the number of polls I’ve written about here, it’s been a while since I’ve taken stock of the different results and what we can learn from them. Fortunately, MORI have produced (a few months ago) a handy collection of slides, which brings together a lot what we’ve seen into a single place.

For regular Climate Sock readers (yep, both of you), most of these points will look pretty familiar – but hopefully still a useful reminder.

My conclusions from the charts are:

Level of concern

Climate change and the environment in general isn’t a major issue on most people’s radars.  It doesn’t come high in the list when people are thinking about the issues that affects their day-to-day lives. However, it does become more significant when it’s prominent for external reasons: severe weather attributed to climate change; positive media attention (e.g. around the Stern report).  Equally, it can be less of a concern for the opposite reasons. Indeed, the dates for the fieldwork for a number of the charts – early 2010 – have, I believe, reduced some of the scores for action on tackling climate change. So comparisons with 2005 and 2008 look worse than I suspect they would have been if the fieldwork had been a couple of months later.

I think this suggests that people generally don’t reject the idea of climate change as an important issue. When they’re reminded about it, it reappears as something important. But most of the time, most people aren’t affected by it at an emotional level, any more than most people in rich countries are affected emotionally by food security in the global South apart from when starvation makes the TV screens.

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The dust is still whirling around the Australian political landscape. As I write, not only are the coalition talks barely beginning, but with five seats still in doubt it’s not yet clear where the balance of power lies.

Still, there are some conclusions we can draw at this stage that are interesting for Greens in Australia, the UK and potentially elsewhere.

1. Greens are making electoral progress around the world

Like in the UK earlier this year, this was the best-ever election result for the Australian Greens. They won a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time in a competitive election, and increased their vote share to its highest national level. Not only will they potentially hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives (two recounts are currently underway that could potentially give them further seats), they’ll also increase their group in the Senate, further adding to their influence.  Above all else, the result is hugely encouraging for Green Parties, and a further demonstration that they have the opportunity to become mainstream across the world.

2. Non-proportional systems hurt Greens

With the inching progress in the UK towards a referendum for an AV electoral system, the results of the Australian Greens are instructive. Sure, AV allows people to vote for their favoured party, when they wouldn’t necessarily take that voting risk for under FPTP. But in Australia that’s still not enough to avoid squeezing out smaller parties. The comparison between vote share and seats won in the House of Representative is reminiscent of the images used by the UK Take Back Parliament campaign earlier this year:

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Last week, we saw that Australian PM Julia Gillard’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to analyse and propose climate policy was widely criticised – but that despite the hype, there really wasn’t any evidence that it was turning the election against Labor. A week on, and it looks like the fuss about Gillard’s plan has completely disappeared, and climate change has become the muzzled dog of the campaign.

For anyone not following the election – you’re missing out. When Gillard called the election last month after toppling Rudd to become Prime Minister, Labor had a fairly healthy lead over the Liberal/National Coalition. But of the last eight polls, three have given the lead to the Coalition, three to Labour (including one being reported as I write), and two call it as a dead heat.  The excellent Pollytics has produced an election simulator that gives a wafer-thin majority to Labor, but it’s clear at this point that the result could easily tip either way.

One of the key factors will be the performance and role of the Greens. They could be crucial in two ways. Firstly, they have a good shot of winning the Melbourne Division from Labor, having polled 45% in the redistributed share in the last election. In an election as close as this, the result in that one seat could make a big difference to Labor – and potentially to the Greens if they win it, and can use its leverage in helping Labor form a government.

Secondly, while the Greens didn’t have any seats in the lower house of the last parliament, they’re polling at around 13% and the election uses Alternative Vote. To bring their redistributed share above 50%, Labor will rely on Green second preferences votes; in the latest Nielsen poll, Labor is getting 83% of those votes – which is strong but leaves perhaps crucial room for improvement.

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The Australian media has been deeply critical of Julia Gillard’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to explore policy responses to climate change. It’s been attacked both by advocates, and critics, of action to tackle climate change – with the coverage attributing particular significance in the heat of the election campaign.

There’s indeed some polling evidence to suggest that voters aren’t convinced by Gillard’s proposal, but its importance in influencing the election seems to have been exaggerated. Despite some of the claims, there’s very little evidence that it’s having much of an impact on voting intentions.

Gillard’s proposal is for a 150-strong assembly of citizens, selected to be nationally representative, which would analyse and discuss climate issues, and make recommendations to policy-makers. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a majority of 53% oppose the proposal, while 41% support it. Another poll for the Daily Telegraph apparently found 62% opposed.

Unfortunately, Australian pollsters don’t appear to be as obliging with their data as are those in some other countries, so I only have these papers’ word to go on for the results of the polls, and can’t check how fairly they’re worded.  This is important because the wording of a question can have a huge impact on the results that come out. But taking the two polls on face value, the conclusion appears to be that the policy is slightly unpopular – but not wildly so.

Despite this, some of the coverage has presented public reaction in a very different light. According to the Australian, “voters have turned against Labor’s proposal for a citizens assembly on climate change”. 3AW claim it could be “the ‘turning point’” of the election.

But these claims that the policy is swinging the election look rather like bluster without any real evidence behind it. Gillard made the announcement on 23^rd July. Since then, the polls have shown no trends and no movement outside the margin of error. One pollster has Labor falling 3pts; another shows them gaining 2pts, then losing 2pts in the next poll; a third has them falling 1.5pt and then losing another point in a subsequent poll.

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However we measure it, climate change has become a less prominent issue in the UK lately. With a new government that looks unexpectedly stable, climate campaigners can no longer count on another election coming along soon to shake things up.  Instead, they need to find ways of working with the current media and political set-up.

There are significant risks in not addressing the way climate change is currently talked about and acted on. While the coalition document suggests the new government has made a fairly good start to climate policy, this may not be sustainable if people don’t start talking and acting differently about climate change.

While climate change has never been the most prominent issue in the UK, lately it’s fallen further from the media’s attention and from most people’s consciousness. Google Trends confirms that both in terms of searches and news coverage, climate change has now dropped to well below the peaks we’ve seen since 2006.

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The big news for the Green Party is Caroline Lucas’ victory in Brighton Pavilion. Winning a Westminster seat for the first time is an eye-catching breakthrough that brings direct benefits in funding and publicity.

But away from Brighton, the Greens’ scores weren’t spectacular; the significance of yesterday may be less the results themselves, and more the opportunity they’ve given the party to build on its current position.

Nationally, the Greens won 286k votes: up about 30k on 2005. But in 2005 they contested 200 seats; this time they were in 334 constituencies, and there was an overall small national swing away from the Greens. Overall, UKIP got 3 times as many votes, and the BNP got twice as many.

Away from Brighton Pavilion, their results in the constituencies they targeted were mixed. In Norwich South they gained 7.5pts, and in Cambridge Tony Juniper gained 4.7pts, but in both they remained in fourth place.  In both Lewisham Deptford and Oxford East, they lost ground, falling by 3.3pts and 2.1pts respectively.

So even where the party is making gains it’s still a very long way from being able to win more constituencies. Only in Norwich South are they in touching distance of the winning party – and Labour and the Lib Dems will be fighting tooth and nail over it.

There’s an argument that this election came at a difficult time for an environmentalist party: the focus on the economy squeezed out most coverage of green issues. But other factors may have helped, since the Tories and Labour were so unpopular, and the Lib Dems look to have been less popular than the polls had suggested.

All this suggests that the extra money, airtime and credibility that Caroline Lucas MP will bring is unlikely to be enough alone to help the party make further gains in Westminster.  The only answer for the Greens looks to be electoral reform.

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Last week we had a look at how the Greens are doing in their campaign to win their first seat in the UK parliament. But as well as those actively fighting for seats, there are also some interesting non-partisan campaigns going on over the election. With the election now only a couple of days away, they’ve pretty much run their course in their current format – but worth looking at as a sign of how some groups are working to increase the political salience of climate change.

One of the most large-scale campaigns has been Ask the Climate Question, organised by nine environmental and development charities and not-for-profits, including Greenpeace, WWF and Oxfam. Their approach has focused on gathering information and raising the profile of climate change: organising hustings and using other routes to ask candidates throughout the country about their policies on climate change.

Just going by coverage and levels of participation, it’s done very well. It’s been carried by most of the mainstream media – albeit generally in the context of the Guardian’s climate change debate – including some of those that typically only like to mention climate change as something that people don’t believe in. It looks like they’ve been getting at least 150 (sometimes twice that) at their events, and have been holding them across the country.  They’ve also been able to get the party leaders to submit videos in which they each personally explain what their parties will do to tackle climate change.

What I think it lacks is an element of punch. It’s a profile-raising campaign, rather than an action-focused one. In contrast, the Spartans campaign (motto: “It’s the climate, stupid”) is focused entirely on political action. The idea behind the campaign (which I’m helping coordinate in one constituency) is to bring together groups of voters in marginal constituencies who will pledge to support whichever credible candidate has the best policies on climate change.

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We saw in February that Caroline Lucas has a pretty good chance as being elected as the Green Party’s first MP. This still looks to be their best shot of winning a seat, but there are several other constituencies that will be interesting to watch over the next couple of weeks and on election night.

Brighton Pavilion

The seat’s currently held by Labour, who have a notional 5000 majority over the Tories. The Lib Dems are also in contention, themselves only about 8000 behind Labour in 2005, so this is very much a four-way marginal. The two polls I know of for the seat give completely different results, but the Green Party’s own poll seems more plausible, and this puts the Greens in the lead.

One issue is that this poll was taken well before the Lib Dem surge (up about 10pts since then). I suspect that if the Libs seem more likely to be elected and to be part of a coalition government, this could well draw votes to them from the Greens.  I doubt this will be enough for the Lib Dems to win the seat, though, and the constituency polls suggest the Tories are out of the running, particularly since they’ve lost national support since then.  So at the moment, this looks to be between Labour and the Greens, and is too close to call.

Lewisham Deptford

This is held by Labour’s Joan Ruddock, and is very safe territory. Last time, Labour won 56% of the vote (albeit down from 65% in 2001); it would take an epic upset for them to lose it. Nonetheless, it’s also one of the Greens’ strongest seats: last time, they won 11% of the vote, narrowly beaten by the Tories into fourth.

Given that the Greens are targeting this as one of their key seats, and their candidate is relatively high profile and credible, they seem very likely to increase their share. Overall, there looks to be a good chance of them overtaking the Tories and Lib Dems to finish second.

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