Environmental Attitudes and Election Issues

Research examining the ways in which attitudes towards policy issues may affect or be affected by election outcomes has yet to explore the increasingly relevant area of environmental policy. Over two studies, linear regression and multi-level modeling is used to create predictive models of voting behavior and attitude change over time, with data from the 2015 Canadian national election. The present research engaged 226,892 participants who visited a political website before the election (Study 1) and 81 participants in a longitudinal study that preceded and followed the election (Study 2). These studies show that although attitudes towards national protection may determine the level of environmental voting at the individual level, attitudes towards social issues do so at the regional level. Furthermore, proenvironmental attitudes seem to increase following the election of a relatively proenvironmental candidate, but only for individuals who voted proenvironmentally, following a pattern of cognitive dissonance for proenvironmental concerns.M.A