Climate change tops list of issues voters say haven’t gotten enough attention this election

Graeme BruceBusiness Data Journalist
October 28, 2020, 12:28 PM GMT+0

With the election campaign drawing to a close, a new Yahoo News / YouGov poll looks at what voters have made of this election cycle.

In terms of the issues tackled, almost half of voters (47%) say that there hasn’t been enough focus on climate change. Similar numbers say there has been too little attention on immigration (44%), healthcare (44%), and crime (41%).

By contrast, voters are most likely to think that Hunter Biden has been a distraction, with 48% saying there has been too much attention paid to the business dealings of the Democratic candidate’s son.

Other top issues which voters thought got too much attention during include Russia (32%), COVID-19 (31%), and race (27%).

Among supporters of President Donald Trump, about seven in 10 (71%) say too little attention was paid to Hunter Biden. Trump supporters also thought too much attention was paid to Russia (58%), COVID-19 (58%), race (50%) and climate change (50%).

Among Biden supporters, climate change (76%) sits atop the list of issues that got too little attention during the election, followed by healthcare (60%) and race (54%). Biden supporters thought too much attention was paid to their candidate’s son Hunter (79%), followed by the Supreme Court (15%) and crime (14%).

As Election Day draws near, the assessment of half (50%) of likely voters is that Joe Biden has run the better campaign. Only one in three think that the president’s campaign has been superior.

About half (48%) of likely voters say they learned something new about the two candidates during the campaign period. Trump voters are slightly more likely than Biden voters to say so, by 56% to 44%.

Methodology: The Yahoo! News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 U.S. registered voters interviewed online between October 23-25, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S registered voters. The margin of error for the entire sample. is ±3.0%