Risk in translation: Climate risk, social vulnerability, and clean energy support across the United States

Public support for clean energy tends to follow perceived climate risk, but the relationship between objective climate hazards and that perception remains unexplored. Drawing on Yale Climate Opinion Maps, FEMA's National Risk Index, and 2024 election results across 3094 U.S. counties, we examine geographic co-variation among objective climate risk, perceived risk, social vulnerability, political context, and support for a clean energy transition. We found that support is strongly spatially clustered, closely tracking regional patterns of risk perception and political identity. The relationship between objective hazards and perceived risk reverses across the political spectrum: in liberal-leaning counties, greater hazard exposure coincides with higher perceived risk, wheras in conservative-leaning counties, it coincides with lower perceived risk. Perceived climate risk is the strongest county-level correlate of clean energy support, but this association is weaker in conservative counties than in liberal ones. Social vulnerability is positively associated with support in conservative counties, and negatively in moderate and liberal ones. The same objective risk and vulnerability thus translate into markedly different risk perceptions and energy preferences across poli contexts, and strategies that ignore this asymmetry are unlikely to build durable support.