Our mental snapshot of the politics of the Keystone XL pipeline is pretty straightforward — Republicans and most independents want it built; so do some Democrats, but most Democrats and the environmental left are opposed. A new study in Energy Policy, though, suggests that this assumption about pipeline politics mainly holds on the national level — but not so much locally. Rather, the research finds, as you get closer to living near the proposed pipeline route, liberals and conservatives look less different in their views — and liberals as a whole become more in favor of the pipeline. The result suggests that anti-pipeline advocates may be losing the framing war to those who endlessly cite the pipeline’s alleged economic benefits. The research , conducted by Timothy Gravelle of the University of Essex and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal, drew upon data from a series of three large Pew polls of […]