This finding bodes poorly for companies and market participants that are involved in building and/or investing in efforts to green the economy, or that have begun preparing to comply with increasingly formalized (and potentially costly) climate-related disclosure requirements advanced by the Biden administration. Further policy efforts along these lines are unlikely to see the light of day under a divided Congress marked by greater GOP representation in the House of Representatives: Only 17% of Republican voters place climate change among their top five foreign policy issues, compared with a majority (54%) of Democrats.
Immigration and human rights are both poised to remain partisan flashpoints
Immigration policy is similarly polarized. Just over two-thirds of Republicans (67%) rank it among their top five issues, compared with only 22% for Democrats. The relatively wide gap and a newly GOP-controlled House suggests that state-level Republican legislators and governors will continue to find a permissive environment for migrant transfers to Democratic states come January. Conversely, the data suggests that while prevailing attitudes among GOP constituents would be conducive to national-level efforts to stem the flow of migrants across U.S. borders as an unprecedented wave of Venezuelans seek to enter the country, a Democratic Senate is unlikely to move as aggressively on the issue.
Noteworthy polarization is also visible when it comes to U.S. voters’ demands for protecting human rights globally, which Democrats rank seventh, compared with 12th for Republicans. The finding comes at a time when Americans are increasingly demanding corporate action on social issues, with a majority (58%) saying they “strongly” or “somewhat” prefer to buy from companies that reflect their social values, per our Global Corporate Purpose Tracker. In parallel, a nontrivial share of U.S. adults (39%) indicate they would consider no longer purchasing from companies that are complicit in human rights violations. The share rises to 46% for a closely related issue: the use of forced labor in corporate supply chains, an ongoing flashpoint in U.S.-China relations due to the Biden administration’s passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Companies should expect U.S. voters who care about these issues to lean even more heavily on them (and less so on government) under a divided Congress. GOP policymakers will have little incentive to address global human rights violations given their constituents’ limited concern about this issue. Instead, consumers who care about such allegations, and especially Democrats, will have added impetus to address them by voting with their wallets.
A divided Congress is likely to upweight China and Iran policy, downweight Russia policy
Voters’ top five foreign policy issues are also noteworthy for what they leave out: major geopolitical challenges confronting the United States, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S.-China relations and the Iran nuclear deal, all of which exhibit a moderate degree of partisan polarization.
If anything, companies and market actors should anticipate greater emphasis on addressing the latter two issues under a divided Congress. Republican voters rank both China and Iran policy more highly than Democrats, and by wide margins: The former place them in seventh and eighth place by share, compared with 13th and 14th for Democrats. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, meanwhile, ranks sixth among Democrats and 10th among Republicans. Its placement in the latter group’s ranking suggests that efforts to resolve the war and provide further economic and military aid to Ukraine risk being deprioritized, in line with recent media reporting.
U.S. efforts to constrain China’s rise are especially primed for escalation owing to Republican voters’ simultaneous upweighting of China policy writ large and securing critical supply chains, a strategy that is squarely intended to impede China. Although the latter issue ranks 10th among Democrats (compared with fifth for Republicans), the Biden administration has moved aggressively to shore up U.S. supply chains that present national security risks — visible in its rollout of heightened screening of inward Chinese investment, enhanced export controls and the CHIPS and Science Act, and facilitated in part by broad Republican alignment on the growing geopolitical threat that China poses.
Given this alignment, a divided Congress is unlikely to steer prevailing China policy in a dramatically different direction, nor should it stymie progress on existing initiatives. Those who see material risks in U.S.-China relations should plan for continued bilateral antagonism for the foreseeable future, in line with much of our recent work on the issue (see here and here).
Partisan polarization on specific foreign policy issues masks shared sentiment on how to manage them
Despite pronounced polarization on which foreign policy issues Americans care most about, Democrats and Republicans are more closely aligned when it comes to their appetites for American involvement in global issues more generally, and how they want the U.S. government to address them.
Isolationism, not engagement
When it comes to the overarching principles that guide America’s foreign policy, more Republican voters than not (46%), and a near plurality of Democrats (32%), would like to see greater isolationism, marked by more limited U.S. engagement on various fronts and more pronounced economic closure.
Our data establishes this point by assessing voters’ preferences for increased or decreased American engagement across three core aspects of U.S. foreign policy — soft power and foreign aid, global military operations, and economic openness — and aggregating them into a series of indexes. The table below provides a summary of voters’ preferences by party affiliation.
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