Majority of Ohioans back some form of student loan forgiveness, poll shows

A majority of Ohioans favored at least some action on student loan forgiveness and climate change, according to new polling results.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for Baldwin Wallace University, asked 856 registered Ohio voters their opinions of a variety of topics, including gun control, student loan debt forgiveness, favorability of Gov. Mike DeWine/President Joe Biden and more. The online poll was conducted from Sept. 30 through Oct. 3 and included a randomly selected group of adults.

The margin of error overall was plus/minus 4.2%. For specific groups — such as liberal, conservative, gun-owning, evangelical, white, Black, etc. — the margins of error were higher.

The poll indicated voters in Ohio tend to be more moderate than the state’s elected representatives, who swing harder to the political right, said Lauren Copeland, the associate director of Baldwin Wallace’s Community Research Institute.

“Politicians in Columbus are out-of-step with what voters want,” Copeland said.

Student loan forgiveness

Just under two-thirds of respondents said they support forgiving at least some student loan debt for at least some borrowers. However, the most popular answer to the question, at 29% of responses, was that no student loans should be forgiven at all. The second most popular answer, at 22% of responses, was that all student loan debt should be forgiven for all borrowers.

Respondents with some college education were almost twice as likely as those with four-year degrees to say all student loan debt should be forgiven for all borrowers. Age was also a major factor in respondents’ opinions on the issue. More than a third of respondents between 18-34 said all student loan debt should be forgiven for all borrowers, while only 12% of respondents older than 50 said the same.

Perhaps the starkest difference on this question was along ideological lines. Nearly 54% of conservatives said no student loan debt should be forgiven at all, while only 5% of liberals said the same. The ideological split was larger than other factors, such as race, party affiliation or whether respondents identified as evangelical.

The Baldwin Wallace poll findings on student loan debt forgiveness match up with nationwide polls that have found a majority of Americans favor at least some student loan debt forgiveness. An Axios/Ipsos poll from August 2021 found 55% of respondents favored at least some student loan forgiveness. Other polls have found similar results.

Climate change

Ohioans overwhelmingly agree with the lion’s share of scientists in both saying Earth is warming and that humans are responsible for it. Only 7% of respondents said the climate is not changing, while twothirds said human activity has either “some” or “a great deal” to do with climate change, according to the survey results.

Ohioans also overwhelmingly favored action on climate change.

The most popular method of fighting climate change among Ohioans surveyed was planting trees. Four in five Ohioans said they support planting a trillion trees worldwide to absorb carbon emissions. More than seven in 10 Ohioans said they support stronger rules that limit power plant carbon emissions. Sixty-eight percent of Ohioans said they support taxing corporations based on how much carbon they pump into the atmosphere and just under two-thirds support stronger fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles, according to the survey results.

Not every method to limit climate change was popular, however. Only 31% of survey respondents said they opposed fracking, the process that uses drilling, water, sand and chemicals to extract natural gas or oil from shale beds.

Age was a factor in people saying whether they agreed with scientists that climate change is happening and whether they favor action to mitigate the most serious impacts of climate change.

Of respondents aged 18-34, 74% said they believe human activity has “a great deal” or “some” to do with climate change; whereas 58% of respondents over the age of 50 said the same.

Liberals, moderates and those with four-year degrees were also more likely to say humans are having an impact on their climate. A sizable minority of conservatives, 44%, said human activity has “a great deal” or “some” to do with climate change. Only 16% of conservatives said they don’t believe the climate is changing.

The support for fracking, 46% of total respondents, also depended heavily on political ideology. Nearly two-thirds of conservatives said they strongly or somewhat support fracking, while only 31% of liberals said the same. However, many voters are undecided on this issue. Nearly a quarter of overall respondents said they were “not sure” whether they support fracking.

While the youngest bracket tended to be the most progressive on climate change, they didn’t lead every category. The middle age bracket, 35-50, voiced the highest levels of support for taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon they produce. In that age bracket, 73% of respondents said they strongly or somewhat support corporations based on their carbon pollution, while 70% of respondents aged 18-34 said the same.

These polling results are similar to other, recent polling results on climate change from throughout the country. A study from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication that relied on nationwide survey data from 2008 to 2021 found 72% of people say climate change is happening, and 57% say it is caused by human activities. The Yale study also found two-thirds of respondents favor a carbon tax, three-fourths favor funding research into renewable energy sources and a majority believe citizens, large corporations and elected officials at all levels of government need to do more to address climate change.

While Ohioans say they want to see more action to address climate change, the state may be less likely

than people throughout the country to voice support for climate change prevention programs.

In a 2020 Pew Research Center survey that found 90% of respondents favored planting a trillion trees worldwide to absorb more carbon, 80% said there should be stronger restrictions on power plant emissions, 73% favored taxing corporations based on their carbon pollution and 71% favored more stringent standards for automotive carbon emissions.