A new report from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication suggests (PDF) that a slim majority of Republicans accept that climate change is happening. The researchers surveyed 726 adults who recently identified themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independent voters.
When presented with a definition of climate change as "the idea that the world's average temperature has been increasing over the past 150 years, may be increasing more in the future, and that other aspects of the world's climate may change as a result," and asked "Do you think that climate change is happening," 52% answered yes, 26% answered no, and 22% answered don't know.
When asked "To what degree do you agree with the Republican Party's position on the issue of climate change?" 9% of respondents strongly agreed, 25% moderately agreed, 34% neither agreed nor disagreed, 6% moderately disagreed, and 4% strongly agreed. The Republican party's position on climate change was not specified in the poll question.
The sample for the survey was drawn from adults who identified themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning in previous Climate Change in the American Mind surveys. The average margin of sampling error was +/- 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Demographics were weighted with data from the most recent Current Population Survey.