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Recent research suggests that public support for climate action can be increased by bundling environmental policy with social and economic programs – the Green New Deal being one of the most widely known iterations of this strategy. Yet, party cue theory suggests that public support for the policy will be shaped by the strong Democratic associations of the proposal. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted among 1,203 residents of the rural western United States, I find strong evidence that the phrase 'the Green New Deal' functions as a partisan cue, lowering support for a bundled climate policy among rural residents by 9.1 percentage points. This depressive effect is robust even when framing around region-specific climate impacts is added to the survey question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing literature points to a number of factors that shape subnational support for climate policy, the extant scholarship has struggled to illustrate a clear and convincing explanation for subnational support of climate policy efforts and whether that support is meaningful. By looking to the United States, where subnational actors have an important role in environmental policy development and implementation, we find that legislators' ideology and membership in the minority party determines sponsorship of climate bills. Specifically, liberal legislators with the fewest opportunities to signal efficacy to their constituents are the most likely to support subnational climate change policy efforts. Given that the individuals most likely to support climate policy efforts are those without capacity, many support efforts may be more symbolic than substantive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]