A clear majority of Americans, and about half of all Republicans, would support a carbon tax if it meant taxes were reduced elsewhere, according to a new survey.

Those findings stand at odds with much of the rhetoric from Republican politicians, whose party line explicitly opposes charging fossil fuel companies a fee for damaging the environment.

Overall, two in three registered voters support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax so long as income or other taxes are reduced. This is often referred to as a "revenue neutral carbon tax."

Democrats were the group most likely to support such a policy, with 81 percent of them in favor. About 60 percent of independents said they would support this type of policy. But 49 percent of Republicans said they'd support the idea as well.

The survey was conducted by researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. It was based on a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 registered voters.

"Party platforms are written by party elites, and they often don't represent their full constituencies," said Anthony Leiserowitz, who co-authored the study, in an interview with CNBC.

A representative for the Republican National Committee was not immediately available for comment. But the 2016 GOP platform explicitly states that it opposes "any carbon tax."



"It would increase energy prices across the board, hitting hardest at the families who are already struggling to pay their bills in the Democrats' no-growth economy," the platform says. "We urge the private sector to focus its resources on the development of carbon capture and sequestration technology still in its early stages here and overseas."