What Does The Public Think Of The "Green New Deal"?

There's been a lot of talk on the media recently about the program proposed by progressive Democrats called the "Green New Deal". The media doesn't go into what the elements of that proposal are, but just talk about whether it is a good thing or not. The Republicans call it "socialism", while the Democrats call it a commonsense agenda.

What does the public think of it? As the top chart shows, about 23% support it and 24% oppose it. The rest (53%) don't support or oppose it, primarily because they don't know what it is. That's understandable, because frankly I doubt anyone in the general public could list the 15 elements of the plan.

This is poor planning by the Democrats. The public is not going to accept any plan they don't understand -- no matter how good the plan is, or how much the country needs it.

The charts on this page are from the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between February 10th and 12th of 1,500 adults nationwide, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

After asking respondents what they thought of the "Green New Deal", and getting rather poor approval (as the chart above shows), the poll then broke the 15 elements of the deal down and asked respondents what they thought of each one individually. The results are in the charts below. Note that every element has more support than opposition, and many elements have majority support from the public.

In other words, the public likes the proposal once they understand what is in it. That means the Democrats need to do a much better job of explaining the proposal. In fact, it might even be better to advance them individually, rather than as one giant package.

(NOTE -- You can get a larger view of each chart by clicking on it.)