Building on an idea that seems to have originated with Newt Gingrich, Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has spent the past few weeks calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to be abolished. In the June 13th GOP debate, Bachmann said she would pass the “mother of all repeal bills” to target “job-killing regulations.” She indicated that she’d start with the EPA, and added that it “should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.”

But a new poll from the conservative-leaning Rasmussen** finds that an overwhelming majority of likely voters, including more than two-thirds of independents, disagree with Rep. Bachmann. When asked whether they “favor or oppose abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency,” 61% of likely voters indicated that they are opposed:

Notably, even likely Republican primary voters aren’t so sure about Bachmann’s proposal, with 42% wanting to abolish the EPA, 40% opposed to doing so and 18% unsure.
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New data shows that support for offshore drilling has reached its lowest level ever in Rasmussen’s latest polling. Here’s how the GOP-friendly pollster** frames the latest data (emphasis mine):

With the deepwater oil leak apparently capped after three months of gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, support for both offshore oil drilling and drilling further out in deepwater remains largely unchanged. Most voters also remain concerned about the potential environmental impact of new drilling.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% of U.S. Voters now believe offshore oil drilling should be allowed, while 26% oppose it. One-in-five voters (19%) are undecided.

That’s down from 60% last month. Since the oil rig explosion that caused the massive oil leak, support for offshore drilling has ranged from 56% to 64%.

Predictably, Rasmussen leaves most of the useful information out of their analysis. In their polling immediately prior to the rig explosion in the Gulf, 72% of likely voters supported offshore drilling. Even with Rasmussen’s skewed likely voter model, this represents a 16% shift in just 11 weeks. The current level of support among likely voters, 56%, is the lowest ever recorded by Rasmussen for this question. Moreover, support among Democrats for offshore drilling has dropped from 54% in early April to just 29% in the latest poll. Support among Republicans remains relatively flat, down just 4%. GOP support for offshore drilling, at 82%, is actually up 8% from its low point in late May.

This chart shows the extent to which Democratic support for offshore drilling has plummeted and Republican support for the controversial practice has remained steady, in the wake of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

As I’ve documented several times in recent months, the modern Republican party does not care at all about the environment. This represents an unprecedented political opportunity for Democrats, who could really put Republicans on the spot by putting forth a common sense energy and climate bill and forcing them to choose between polluting industries and the planet. In an example of profound political malpractice, though, it appears as if Democrats may end up squandering this opportunity.

**Rasmussen’s conservative bias is well documented. See here, here, here, here and here.

The beginning of this Bloomberg story is completely false:

Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama’s ban on deepwater oil drilling in response to BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill, even as they hold the company primarily responsible for the incident.

Almost three-fourths, or 73 percent, say a ban is unnecessary, calling the worst oil spill in U.S. history a “freak accident,” according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

Without looking at the poll’s toplines (PDF), you might not realize what is wrong with these two paragraphs. As it turns out, Bloomberg’s poll did not ask about President Obama’s temporary ban on deepwater drilling. Here is the question they actually asked:

As you can see, they asked whether all offshore drilling should be banned in U.S. waters, without specifying a timeframe. President Obama’s moratorium, on the other hand, applies only to deepwater drilling (deepter than 1,000 feet) and only for six months.

I’ve emailed the Bloomberg reporter who made this mistake, Kim Chipman, and will be updating here if a correction is made.

The Daily Beast and The Atlantic have also picked up Bloomberg’s erroneous reporting on this. I’ve requested corrections from both of these publications as well.

ABC released polling yesterday with a similar question (PDF): "Do you support or oppose the current six-month ban on new offshore oil drilling while authorities investigate the cause of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?" Although ABC also failed to make the distinction between between deepwater drilling and all offshore drilling, they did ask specifically about President Obama’s six month moratorium. Surprise, surprise, this wording produced a significantly different result:

In the ABC poll, 60% of respondents supported Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling, while just 39% opposed it. Loading their poll questions with framing that is likely to produce business-friendly results is bad enough. Completely misreporting the findings of their polls is going too far. Bloomberg should follow CNN’s lead on this and correct their piece as soon as possible.

Update — Kevin Drum had similar thoughts:

This is stunningly bad journalism. Pending a safety review, Obama has put in place a five-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the outer continental shelf. But the Bloomberg question doesn’t ask about this: it asks if offshore drilling should be flatly "banned in U.S. waters." These aren’t even remotely the same things, and in no way can you conclude from this question that "most Americans oppose" the moratorium. They might, but an ABC poll that actually asks the question properly1 tells us that only 39% oppose Obama’s moratorium.

The Bloomberg results make for an exciting headline, but that’s about it. Correlation with reality is pretty close to zero.

Update 2 — At WaPo’s Behind the Numbers blog, Jon Cohen writes:

On Wednesday, one headline screamed "Americans in 73% Majority Oppose Deepwater Drilling Ban." Another poll showed 56 percent support for the moratorium.

What gives?

The answer is pretty straightforward: the two national polls asked about completely separate things. You decide.

In the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, respondents were asked this: "Do you support or oppose the current six-month ban on new offshore oil drilling while authorities investigate the cause of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?" Some 56 percent of those polled said they’re in favor of the temporary suspension. (In the most affected Gulf counties, the results were flipped, with 60 percent opposition.)

The Bloomberg questionnaire phrases it thusly: "Do you think the spill proves off-shore drilling is just too dangerous and should be banned in U.S. waters, or was just a freak accident and offshore drilling can be made safer and should not be banned?" This is the one showing 73 percent on the negative side.

Obviously, I see the first question as a clear read on a current policy choice, and the second as about something else entirely. The latter question is useful to understanding public attitudes, but it’s not necessarily focused on the ban that’s in place. That question potentially confounds views on the short-term ban, drilling more broadly and the cause of the spill.

Update 3 — Kudos to Atlantic Monthly’s Nicole Allan, who has corrected her piece. She notes that Bloomberg’s story about the poll is incorrect:

*This post formerly read that 73 percent of Bloomberg respondents thought the deepwater drilling moratorium was "unnecessary." This assertion directly reflected Bloomberg’s article about the poll, but has been revised to reflect the polling language.

Jonathan Cohn, writing at his new must-read blog, has a fascinating piece on the policy implications of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gist of his argument is that the public push for clean energy policy — in the form of marches on Washington and calls to Congress — is more subdued than should be expected in the wake of such a devastating environmental catastrophe, and that this dynamic is largely responsible for the Senate’s slim chances of moving comprehensive legislation this year.

While I think this argument has some merit, Cohn leaves out several key considerations.

First, I disagree with Cohn’s characterization of last weekend’s Hands Across the Sand offshore drilling protests. Using turnout estimates of 400 and 450 from two of the 814 protest locations in the United States, he concludes, "[t]hat probably means a few thousand people participated nationwide." He continues, "That’s a perfectly respectable figure in normal times. But with the nation’s worst environmental catastrophe–an oil spill, of all things–in progress? Under those circumstances, the numbers seem a little disappointing."

Those numbers do seem disappointing, but only because they are not accurate. While nationwide numbers have not yet been released, a few minutes of Googling reveals considerably higher turnout numbers. In St. Petersburg, Florida, for example, over 5,000 people turned out for Saturday’s event. Even at an extremely conservative estimate of an average of 50 people per event, the 814 events nationwide would have had over 40,000 people in attendance. Sierra Club pegs the total at tens of thousands. Either way, these numbers are quite impressive for a volunteer-led event that was planned in a matter of weeks, by my standards at least. Dave Rauschkolb, the organizer of Hands Across the Sand, isn’t overly concerned with the raw numbers. To him, the real impact is on a more human level. "Every photograph, every video, every footprint in the sand tells the story of how much Americans care about their coastal heritage," he told me by phone Wednesday evening.

Moving on, Cohn continues (emphasis mine):

We have no shortage of committed environmentalists in this country. But two months after the Deepwater Horizon rig first exploded, where are the marches on Washington? Where are the phone calls lighting up Capitol Hill switchboards? Congressional staffers I’ve contacted tell me constituent contact on climate change has increased in the last few weeks, but only incrementally.

A few points on this.

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The latest NBC/WSJ poll includes a number of interesting findings. Dave Weigel and Alex Seitz-Wald both took note of BP’s extremely low favorability ratings:

Indeed, the poll shows that only 6 percent have a favorable rating of BP. In the history of the NBC News/Journal poll, Saddam Hussein (3 percent), Fidel Castro (3 percent) and Yasser Arafat (4 percent) have had lower favorable scores, and O.J. Simpson (11 percent) and tobacco-maker Philip Morris (15 percent) have had higher ratings.

But another finding of interest hasn’t received nearly as much attention. Question 16 used the following wording:

Now I’m going to read you some things that you might learn about a candidate running for Congress. For each one, please tell me whether (A) you are enthusiastic about the candidate having this attribute, (B) you are comfortable with it, (C) you have some reservations about it, (D) you are very uncomfortable with it, or (E) it makes no difference to you. (RANDOMIZE)

One of the topics they included in this question was offshore drilling. Specifically, they asked how voters felt about candidates who ‘Favor continuing oil drilling off the U.S. coast.’ Notice that they did not ask about candidates who favor increased drilling, they asked about candidates who favor continuing drilling. The results are astounding: 48% of voters are either very uncomfortable or have reservations about Congressional candidates who ‘favor continuing’ offshore drilling. Just 41% are comfortable or enthusiastic about candidates taking that position:

The results are in folks: offshore drilling is a political loser this year. I’m looking forward to seeing just how unpopular increased drilling is, in light of these results.

The full results of the poll can be found here.

CNN released new polling Thursday with fascinating data on how Americans feel about the response to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Using the poll’s toplines (PDF), I’ve created a series of charts which present the data in a far more useful format.

First and foremost, it looks Rep. Joe Barton (R-Big Oil) and the Republican Study Committee are pretty lonely in their belief that the creation of an escrow fund paid for by BP amounts to a shakedown by the federal government. The idea is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans:

Since CNN doesn’t provide the crosstabs we don’t know who the 18% are. I’d be willing to bet they’re almost all Republicans.

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A new Fox News poll finds that support for offshore drilling continues to drop dramatically. While the percentage of Americans in favor of increased drilling has dropped from 70% to 46% in just two months, the percentage opposed has more than doubled, from 22% to 48%.

This is in line with the findings of dozens of other polls in recent weeks.

Here is how Fox News presents the data:

This chart illustrates the massive shift in public opinion much more clearly:

The full results of the poll can be found here.

The new Economist/YouGov poll is out (previous polls here), and it includes several questions on the disaster in the Gulf and offshore drilling.

Of particular interest, 48% of those who are familiar with the spill think BP knowingly violated oil drilling regulations in advance of the disaster. Just 20% disagreed and 32% were not sure. As the DOJ’s investigation unfolds, we can expect a good portion of those who were not sure to move over to the ‘knowingly violated regulations’ camp. Coupled with the company’s dismal favorability ratings among Americans, this does not bode well for the future of BP in the United States.

The crosstabs (click for full size) for this question show that liberals, Democrats and those 65+ were most likely to conclude that BP knowingly violated drilling regulations:

In another question, they explored attitudes toward various energy sources:

Interestingly, just 36% of Democrats supported expanding the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants.

Finally, the poll found that support for increased offshore drilling continues to erode, dipping below 50% for the first time:

The full results of the poll are below can be found here.

Citing a Rasmussen poll Greg Sargent took note of yesterday, which indicated that 22% of Americans currently have a favorable view of BP, Barbara Morrill at Daily Kos asks who these 22% of Americans are.

Using the crosstabs from the poll (premium account required), I put together this chart to answer Barbara’s question:

Those most likely to view BP favorably are, respectively: Republicans, Conservatives, American Over Age 65, Whites and Males. Those least likely to view BP favorably are, respectively: Liberals, Blacks, Democrats, Americans Between the Ages of 18-29 and Females.

Interestingly, the demographics of those most likely to view BP favorably lines up closely with the demographics of those who supported offshore drilling in early April, prior to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. An analysis I conducted on April 8th found that offshore drilling was most popular among Republicans, the Elderly, Whites and Wealthy Americans.

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Via Right Now, Quinnipiac has released new polling on offshore drilling showing, among other things, a nine percent drop in the percentage of Americans who support offshore drilling. Here are some of the results of interest:

Democrats, liberals, minorities and young Americans continue to approve the President’s response to the disaster.

While the level of support for offshore drilling in Quinnipiac’s poll experienced a 9% decrease since August 2008, many other polls have shown a greater decline. This likely has something to do with how Quinnipiac framed the offshore drilling question: "To help solve the energy crisis and make America less dependent on foreign oil, do you support or oppose – drilling for new oil supplies in currently protected areas off shore?"

This wording of this question has multiple problems, but I’ll focus on one in particular.

A leading question is a question that contains a false presupposition. The potentially false presuppositions here are that expanded offshore drilling will "help solve the energy crisis" and "make America less dependent on foreign oil." As many commentators have noted, the energy crisis is primarily a demand-side problem. Efforts undertaken to marginally increase energy supplies, while ignoring the broader problems of waste and excessive consumption, will not necessarily do anything to "help solve the energy crisis." It is also not clear that increased offshore drilling would "make America less dependent on foreign oil," despite being a relatively prominent conservative talking point. As a fungible commodity, oil is sold on the global market at prices determined internationally. Oil extracted from the Gulf of Mexico by a multinational corporation is just as likely to end up in a motorbike in Wuhan or Shenzhen as an SUV in Des Moines or Sacramento.

At best, both of these presuppositions are matters of opinion. At worst, they project conservative frames as fact, immediately prior to asking a highly charged and overtly political question. Either way, they don’t add anything meaningful to our understanding of public opinion on the issue.

Using liberal/environmental frames as the presuppositions, the question could have been worded differently: "To prevent catastrophic environmental disasters like the one currently taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, do you support or oppose – drilling for new oil supplies in currently protected areas off shore?"

Is there any doubt that such wording would have produced different results?

If the goal of the question is to determine the level of support for offshore drilling, why not ask that directly? Associating the practice of offshore drilling with two presumably positive outcomes is likely to prime participants for pro-drilling responses.

I’ve emailed my complaints and questions here to the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. I’ll update here with their response, once they’ve provided it.