Republicans have grown much less confident in science than in the past — at the same time Democrats today have more confidence in science, a new survey showed.
In a breakdown released Friday from a Gallup poll, 64% of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in science, compared with 70% when the pollster last measured it in 1975.
The divide was considerably wider among partisans, the poll found, with 45% of Republicans saying they have confidence in science in 2021 compared with 72% who felt that way in 1975.
Among Democrats, 79% say they’re confident now, compared with 67% who said so in 1975.
Among independent voters, 65% have confidence in science, compared with 73% who felt that way in the earlier survey.
The June 1-July 5 survey of 1,381 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
"It appears that science, like many other issues, has become a politicized topic," pollster Jeffrey M. Jones wrote.
"Republican mistrust may stem from conservative thought leaders' allegations of liberal bias in the scientific community, perhaps because colleges and universities employ many scientists," Jones wrote. "Republicans also mistrust colleges and universities and cite a liberal political agenda as the reason for that lack of trust."
The current 34-point party gap in confidence in science is among the largest Gallup measured for any of the institutions they measured in this year’s poll, released on Thursday, exceeded only by a 49-point party divide in ratings of the presidency and 45 points in ratings of the police.
One 2014 study asserted it had found a possible reason for the partisan divide in climate science — Republicans don’t hate climate science, they just dislike the solutions from Democrats, the Washington Post reported at the time.
So-called "solution aversion" colors conservatives' thinking about the science itself, the research found.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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