A new analysis of 20 years of Gallup environmental surveys has found that while political party affiliation remains the strongest predictor of Americans' climate attitudes, it fails to capture the full complexity of public opinion. Researchers examining individual responses from 2000 to 2020 found that factors such as age, education, and policy design create significant divisions within parties — with younger Republicans, for instance, broadly supporting solar energy while opposing carbon taxes, and many climate-concerned Democrats rejecting proposals to legally limit household energy use. Crucially, the largest group identified across the two decades of data was neither committed climate advocates nor sceptics, but a "mixed middle" of over 10,000 respondents whose views shifted depending on how policies were framed and what trade-offs they involved — suggesting that US climate opinion, though polarised, remains far from settled.