About one-third of Vermonters were directly impacted by July’s historic flooding events, and 13% experienced damage to their home or place of work. That’s according to a new poll released Tuesday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
The poll, which collected responses online from 471 randomly selected Vermonters between Aug. 17 and Aug. 21, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5%. It found that 22% of respondents said they were unable to get to their home or business because of flooded or damaged roads, and 14% lost power or utility access. One percent said their home or place of work was destroyed.
Impacts varied dramatically by region. Seventy-one percent of central Vermont residents said they experienced a direct impact, while 38% of southern Vermont residents, 35% of northern Vermont residents, and 13% of Chittenden County residents said they were affected.
Among those who reported their town or city was significantly affected, 18% said it had completely recovered, 43% said it had largely recovered, 28% said it had somewhat recovered, and 5% said it had not at all recovered. But among central Vermont respondents, only 37% said that their town or city had completely or largely recovered.
Most Vermonters polled — 72% — said they approved of Gov. Phil Scott’s handling of the natural disaster. Polling consistently finds that Democrats give the Republican governor higher marks than members of the GOP, and this survey’s results repeated the pattern. Seventy-six percent of Democrats said they approved of Scott’s handling of the floods, while 70% of Republicans and 64% of independents said the same.
Prior surveys, including a Vermont Public poll in 2022 and one conducted by Energy Independent Vermont in 2016, have repeatedly found that a majority of Vermonters believe climate change is real and caused by human activity. This one was no different: 67% of respondents said they believed that climate change was happening now and caused by human activity.
But there were nevertheless striking differences based on political affiliation. Among Democrats, 97% said that climate change was real and caused by humans, but among Republicans, a plurality (41%) said — contrary to a global scientific consensus — that climate change was happening but due to “natural forces.”
Climate data also shows that while winter is Vermont’s fastest-warming season, summer is getting hotter too. But partisanship is also affecting how people perceive the weather. Eighty-three percent of Democrats said they felt that summers in Vermont have gotten warmer over the last twenty years; 49% of independents said they thought that summers were colder and 75% of Republicans said they thought that they were about the same.
Seventy-two percent of Vermonters polled said they are very or somewhat concerned about the current effects of climate change on the world, and Vermonters said they are about equally likely to be very concerned about the effects of climate change in the future as they are now.
Survey respondents were slightly less concerned about the local impacts of a changing climate: 65% said they are very or somewhat concerned about the effects of climate change on their town or city. But 52% said that they had avoided outside activities at least one day this summer because of excessive heat.
