Politicians overestimate public opposition to climate policies, study finds

Members of the UK Parliament may be underestimating the public appetite for climate action by a striking margin, according to a new study of 100 sitting MPs. The research suggests that politicians from the three largest parties in the House of Commons consistently overestimate public opposition to policies designed to reduce carbon emissions, while also exaggerating the degree of political polarisation surrounding climate change. Published in Communications Sustainability, the study argues that these distorted perceptions could make ambitious environmental policies appear more politically dangerous than they really are. The result, researchers say, may be a self-reinforcing “spiral of silence” in Westminster, in which MPs who privately support climate measures remain reluctant to advocate for them because they believe voters and fellow parliamentarians will punish them for doing so.

The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cambridge’s El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy and the Cambridge Political Psychology Lab. They surveyed 100 sitting Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs during December 2024 and January 2025, asking them to estimate how the British public and other parliamentarians viewed specific carbon-reduction policies. Those estimates were then compared with nationally representative polling of 4,201 UK adults conducted by Ipsos UK between 18 and 24 April 2024. Because the public survey asked about the same policy proposals, rather than broad questions about whether people “support climate action,” the comparison allowed researchers to measure perception gaps with unusual precision.

One of the policies involved making grants or loans available to every household with an energy-efficiency rating of C or below, enabling residents to improve insulation. MPs estimated that approximately 18 per cent of the public opposed the measure. In reality, opposition stood at only 6 per cent—meaning politicians overestimated resistance by three times. The gap was also substantial for a proposed environmental product tax, under which the tax applied to goods would vary according to their environmental damage. MPs believed that around 38 per cent of the public opposed this approach, while the Ipsos polling found opposition at approximately 20 per cent. The figures indicate that parliamentarians were not simply mistaking widespread enthusiasm for mild ambivalence; they were systematically imagining a much larger hostile constituency than the data revealed.

The researchers also found that MPs underestimated support, not merely overestimated opposition. On average, they underestimated public backing for the environmental product tax by 14.9 percentage points and support for the insulation policy by 7.1 points. Across both proposals, MPs’ estimates of public support were about 11 percentage points lower than the actual polling results. This distinction matters politically. A politician who believes that voters are undecided may still see an opportunity to persuade them, whereas a politician who believes voters are actively opposed may expect a direct electoral penalty. “Overestimating opposition is likely to generate greater political risk aversion than assuming the public is merely ambivalent,” said lead author Lisa-Maria Tanase, who carried out the research during her PhD at Cambridge.

The perception gap was particularly pronounced when MPs assessed differences between political groups. Polling showed that Labour and Conservative voters differed by 12 percentage points in their support for the climate policies, yet MPs estimated the divide at roughly 25 points. The gap between Liberal Democrat and Conservative voters was judged by MPs to be about 30 percentage points, despite polling indicating a difference of only 14 points. Even the two-point distinction between Labour and Liberal Democrat voters was estimated by MPs at nearly five points. The most dramatic distortion concerned Conservative voters. Parliamentarians believed Conservative supporters were, on average, 12.6 percentage points less supportive of the policies than the public overall, while the polling showed a difference of just 2.5 points—an exaggeration of roughly fivefold.

This phenomenon is known as “false polarisation,” a cognitive and social bias in which people assume opposing groups are more divided than they actually are. In political systems dominated by highly visible conflict, individuals may infer that partisan identities determine opinions more strongly than they do in everyday life. Media coverage can intensify the effect by giving disproportionate attention to confrontational politicians, campaign groups and highly active online communities. The study’s authors argue that MPs may be exposed to an information environment that acts like a “funhouse mirror,” magnifying the loudest opposition while obscuring the quieter majority. Environmentally supportive Conservative voters, for example, may feel misrepresented if politicians repeatedly portray them as fundamentally hostile to climate policy.

The researchers identified evidence that these beliefs influence how MPs say they would behave. For the environmental product tax, MPs who thought public support was lower were less willing to advocate for the measure in public, even after accounting for their own personal views. The same pattern appeared when MPs estimated how many colleagues across Parliament would support the tax. Those who believed the policy had little backing among fellow parliamentarians were also less willing to champion it in Westminster, regardless of whether they personally supported it. This is the mechanism behind the proposed spiral of silence: people who believe their position is unpopular become less likely to express it, which can make the position appear even less popular to everyone else.

The silencing effect was not found for the insulation policy. The authors suggest that subsidies may be viewed as less controversial and more broadly acceptable than taxes, particularly when they promise to reduce household energy costs. The difference illustrates that political perception is not necessarily uniform across all climate measures. Public support can depend on how a policy distributes costs and benefits, whether it is framed as financial assistance or increased taxation, and how easily its consequences can be understood. Technical policy design therefore matters as much as the general label “climate action.” A measure intended to reduce emissions may be widely supported in principle but become politically vulnerable if MPs believe its financial or social costs will trigger organised resistance.

To test whether better information could correct the distorted perceptions, the researchers randomly provided half of the MPs with the relevant public polling results before asking them to estimate support for another set of climate policies. The intervention produced little change in the accuracy of their subsequent estimates. This finding suggests that perception gaps may not be caused simply by a lack of information. Established beliefs, partisan expectations, repeated exposure to polarised debate and assumptions about what is politically safe may be more resistant to correction than a single piece of polling data. Tanase said the results could not be explained by politicians merely projecting their own opinions onto the public: MPs who personally supported a policy also tended to overestimate public opposition to it.

The authors describe the findings as the first data-led evidence of a possible spiral of silence within the British Parliament concerning climate policy, while emphasising that the study identifies associations rather than proving a complete causal chain. The sample included 80 Labour MPs, 16 Conservatives and four Liberal Democrats, broadly reflecting the composition of the Commons at the time but overrepresenting Labour and underrepresenting the Liberal Democrats. Even with those limitations, the research points to a potentially important barrier to faster emissions reduction. If politicians systematically misread public opinion, they may reject policies that voters would accept, avoid cross-party cooperation and communicate excessive pessimism about democratic support for climate action. “Our study found a systematic pessimism about the public appetite for climate action among the UK’s most influential decision-makers,” Tanase said. “This may be contributing to a silencing effect in Parliament around one of the defining policy challenges of the 21st century.”

News Publication Date: 19 August 2026

Web References: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44458-026-00097-9

References: Tanase, L.-M., Reisch, L. A., Dewies, M., & De-Wit, L. “Perception gaps in the British Parliament reveal a possible pathway to stronger climate policy action.” Communications Sustainability. DOI: 10.1038/s44458-026-00097-9