Not so different: Comparing British MPs’ and voters’ attitudes to climate change

Abstract There is a growing literature investigating the attitudes of political elites and citizens in a range of areas, and this article uses matched survey data of British MPs and voters to contribute a new comparison of their views on climate change. It finds limited evidence of systematic differences between MPs’ and voters’ attitudes to climate change: neither group is clearly more concerned about the issue than the other nor more polarized along partisan lines. However, there does appear to be incongruence between MPs’ and voters’ views on some specific climate policies. The research builds on previous analyses of British MPs’ approaches to climate change, including finding that party identity is more useful in predicting their perspectives on climate change than their perception of public attitudes.