It's becoming increasingly clear in our polling in a few key states that much of the shift in public opinion about offshore drilling because of the oil spill was temporary. Polls we did in Florida and Louisiana over the weekend and North Carolina earlier this month all show support for drilling increasing by pretty good amounts compared to the beginning of the summer.
In Louisiana, despite being at the heart of the spill, voters never showed much ambivalence about drilling. When we polled there in June 77% of voters supported it with 12% opposed for a net +65. Still that margin has widened even further now to +73 with 82% of voters favoring it and 9% against.
In Florida and North Carolina though voters had turned against offshore drilling by the middle of July. Last month we found 51% in Florida opposed to 39% in support and in North Carolina we found 46% opposed and 42% in support. Now we find voters in both states back in support of drilling- 48% for to 44% against in Florida and 50% for to 39% against in North Carolina.
Support for drilling in North Carolina is still down a good bit from what it was pre-spill and although we don't have historical data in Florida and Louisiana I imagine the same is true in both of those places as well. But it doesn't look like the spill has caused a major, lasting shift in public opinion about drilling at least in those states.
As predicted, the anti-drilling fad has passed and reason has returned. Now if only the tyrant-in-chief would lift his senseless moratorium on providing America with energy and providing Americans with jobs.
ReplyDeletePeople have no memory whatsoever. Oil was erupting into the gulf for two months. Oil companies have done nothing to improve their safety standards. The Gulf will be a cesspool of death for the next decade. Let's go ahead and f*@$ up the Atlantic while we're at it....who cares
ReplyDeleteThe entire reason there was a leak a mile down in the gulf in the first place was because the extremist left forbid drilling in safer places -- on land, in the wilderness, on shore in shallower waters. The left is entirely to blame for this mess. The solution is to open up MORE land and water to drilling. Drilling in safer places is the solution. It is the idiotic, brainwashed left that prevents this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commonsensegovernmentviews.com/2010/05/whose-blowout-is-it-anyway.html
Opening up more land and water for drilling is right in every way -- it is the moral thing to do, it is right for the economy, it is right for our energy needs, and it is right for the environemnt.
ALL information supports opening up for drilling. No rational, informed person can possibly support a ban on drilling. Anyone who supports a ban on drilling is either misinformed or just plan evil.
Federal prohibitions of drilling are always evil. States or property owners should always have the right to produce energy.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with this offshore drilling project has everything to do with the tyrannical government in Washington (pushed by anti-growth extremists who use phony environmental scares to impose their radical agenda) stopping drilling where it is safer. There is no justification for limiting drilling using the gulf spill as an excuse, as the administration's own scientists attest.
Scientifically, economically, and ethically... energy production should be allowed. It is only dangerous radical socialist tyrants and their dim-witted enablers that oppose drilling for energy.