A new poll finds that a majority of Texas voters support action to address climate change, but how strongly they feel about the issue heading into the 2020 elections depends in part on which political party they belong to.

The survey, released ahead of Thursday’s Democratic primary debate in Houston, found that 63 percent of voters worried about climate change and nearly two-thirds supported the government doing something to tackle it.

But when asked which two issues would most influence their vote, climate change ranked third for Democratic voters, right behind health care and gun policy. But it ranked at the bottom of a list of issues for Republican voters, well behind immigration, the economy and jobs, and health care.

The survey of 1,660 registered voters in Texas was conducted from Aug. 20 to 25 by Climate Nexus, a group focused on communicating the impacts of climate change, together with Yale and George Mason universities. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

The poll is part of a joint effort to survey voters at the national level and in several states to get a better understanding of public opinion on climate change and clean energy, said Ed Maibach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. This is the fourth state that the group has surveyed.

“While the issue of climate change per se is highly polarized on a political basis, although becoming less so now, the issue of clean energy and what our ideal energy future looks like is much less polarized,” he said.

Jack Pratt, senior political director for the Environmental Defense Action Fund, said the poll results show that climate change is good politics in the state and that there’s a clear majority of Texas voters who support action on the issue.

Over the last few years, climate change has increasingly risen as a top-tier campaign issue, especially for Democrats. CNN recently hosted a forum on climate change, the first in a presidential campaign, after the Democratic National Committee declined to sanction a forum devoted to the subject. And all of the leading candidates have released their own climate proposals, with the goal of making the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2050, supporting renewable energy and, in some cases, calling for end to the use of fossil fuels, with some pledging trillions of dollars toward such efforts.

Locally, several Texas cities, including Houston, have began releasing their own climate action plans in response to President Donald Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement. There are also several debates centered on the issue of climate for city council and mayoral elections planned in Houston.

Part of this, Pratt said, is due to the level of activism, particularly among young people. “There’s more of an energized group of people who are eager to see action on climate change and that’s had an impact on both the political debate and what people are talking about.”

It is also seen as a general-election issue as people see the real impacts of extreme weather.

According to the poll, Texas voters in general support policies that would address the impacts of climate change. Two-thirds said developing more renewable energy sources should be the top priority for addressing Texas’s energy needs, compared to 12 percent who said natural gas is most important, and 7 percent who listed power plants.

Also, 7 in 10 Texas voters said they support requiring electric utilities in the state to generate 100 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind or solar by 2050. Texas already produces more wind energy than any other state.

And many voters believe transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy sources would be positive for the state’s economy (62%), the unemployment rate (45%), wages (46%), the cost of electricity (64%) and the environment (76 %).

But whether that translates to actual votes in a state such as Texas remains to be seen.

There’s a growing consensus in Texas that climate change is real, said Mark Jones, political science professor at Rice University. But it is not a priority for voters in both parties.

“Climate change tends to be a very high priority for liberal democrats and not at all for Republicans,” Jones said.

And while Republicans are not going to vote against a candidate failing to do something to prevent global warming, they will vote against a candidate proposing climate measures that could affect the economy, he said.

After the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade measure in 2009, Republicans attacked what they called the “job-killing” legislation during the 2010 midterms on the way to a GOP route. Support for doing something about climate change, which once had bipartisan support, increasingly broke down along party lines. President Donald Trump has mocked the call of some liberal Democrats for a “Green New Deal,” with the White House calling it a “roadmap to destroy the American Economy.”

For a minority in the Republican party, Jones said, there continues to be a debate over whether climate change is happening. And even among those who agree that it is real, there’s a split between people who view it as man-made and those who think it’s naturally occurring.

But Jones added that recent natural disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey, are “are increasing the belief among some people that they are caused by global warming and climate change is having a direct negative impact on Houston.”

Seven in 10 Houston-area voters, more than the proportion statewide, say their area was affected by flooding in the last year. And more than three out of four respondents believe climate change is contributing to extreme weather events in the state.

Voters in Houston are also more likely than Texans overall to say extreme weather has led to them or a family member experiencing anxiety, having to take a break from work or suffering property damage.

Overall, those surveyed worry about climate impacts such as hurricanes and flooding and consider the following to be serious problems: air pollution (71 percent), the pollution of rivers, lakes and streams (76 percent) and explosions at oil and gas facilities (61 percent).

Experts say all of this helps explain overwhelming voter support for measures such as tougher pollution standards for business and stronger fuel efficiency standards.

“These are surprising results in terms of Texas not playing to the stereotype. The stereotype I think of Texas is that it is a very conservative state, heavily fossil-fuel dependent and where climate denial is thriving,” said GMU’s Maibach. “This poll shows it not a state where climate denial is thriving, but where climate reality seems to be breaking through to quite a large degree.”

Still, Jones said, presidential candidates running on aggressive climate change plans — he cites Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as an example — may have difficulty winning states such as Texas in the 2020 general election.

While her stands on several issues might cause her headaches in Texas, Jones said, “her position in support of a ‘New Green Deal’-type policy, that alone would be enough to sink her.”

perla.trevizo@chron.com