Frequent pro-climate messaging does not predict pro-climate voting by United States legislators

Abstract

Legislators who frequently advocate for climate action might be expected to cast more pro-climate votes, but pro-climate messaging alone may not predict actual voting behavior. We analyzed 401 539 tweets posted by 518 United States federal legislators over the 6 months prior to the 2020 election and identified 5350 of these as containing climate-relevant messaging. Of the 4881 tweets that we coded as promoting climate awareness or supporting action (‘pro-climate’), 92% were posted by Democratic legislators while all 138 tweets undermining climate awareness or opposing action (‘anti-climate’) were posted by Republicans. Constituent support for Congressional climate action was only weakly related to the rate of pro-climate tweeting by legislators. Overall, we found that increased pro-climate tweeting was not a significant predictor of pro-climate voting when controlling for party affiliation and constituent support for climate action. We conclude that climate-concerned voters would be best served by using party affiliation rather than climate-related messaging to judge the pro-climate voting intentions of United States legislators.