Nearly 35 percent of Americans support setting stricter limits on tailpipe pollution to encourage carmakers to produce and sell electric vehicles, according to a poll released today by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The survey also found that 41 percent of Americans would consider purchasing an electric vehicle as their next car, while 80 percent said the main barrier to buying a zero-emission car is lack of access to charging infrastructure.
“Policies that alleviate these concerns will be a key component of building support for an EV future,” Jennifer Benz, deputy director of the AP-NORC Center, said in a statement.
Other findings from Tuesday’s poll include:
- Forty-nine percent of Americans support the federal government providing tax credits or other incentives for clean energy, such as those in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats rank climate policy as the third most important issue out of six, behind the economy and health care. A majority of Republicans rank the environment as the least important policy issue.
The poll was conducted from Jan. 31 to Feb. 15 among 5,408 adults in all 50 states and D.C. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.