The Public Is Concerned About the Environment
January 19th, 2010What about the press and politicians?
The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson
As the 2010 election season gears up around the country and in the state, as a trained and credentialed public opinion researcher as well as a journalist who has covered public opinion research for about 30 years, I am always looking to see what the data shows versus what political candidates and the media are spending time talking about.
Economic development is always the number one issue to the press in Alabama and politicians running for office here, a fact that is left over from the post-Civil War industrialization as our society moved away from an agricultural society to a manufacturing society. Of course in the years following the Civil War, we called the businessmen who came South “Yankee carpet-baggers,” but over the years, their reputations became less sullied as they provided jobs for an increasing number of citizens, many of whom moved off the farms to the cities.
And in these economic times, when the nation and the state are still suffering from the results of the Bush recession that started in 2007 even though we didn’t find out about it from the media until January 2008, the economy is still the number one concern of voters, according to the Gallup Poll and other research.
Twenty-nine percent of the American public name the economy in general as the number one problem facing the country. Second to that is health care, however. Twenty-six percent of the people say health care is the number one concern, while 15 percent name unemployment.
Other studies show a high correlation between issues being covered prominently by the media and issues identified by the public to be important.
While the environment only polls from one to three percent on the number one problem question, when asked about their personal worries on environmental problems facing the country at this time, the public overwhelming names polluted water as number one.
According to Gallup, a majority of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about four different environment problems involving water: 58 percent are concerned about pollution of drinking water, 53 percent worry about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, 52 percent express concern about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, and 51 percent worry “a great deal” about the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water.
Global warming concerns have gradually increased over the past few years, and those concerns are “now at their highest level ever,” according to Gallup.
The data shows Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to express concern about all of these environmental problems, especially global warming.
In addition, 46 percent of Americans say they worry a great deal about air pollution, 43 percent worry about damage to the earth’s ozone layer and the loss of tropical rain forests, 41 percent worry about the “greenhouse effect” or climate change due to global warming, and 39 percent worry about the extinction of plant and animal species.
Democrats and Republicans differ most significantly in their concerns about global warming — 55 percent of Democratic voters and only 24 of Republicans worry a great deal about it, in spite of what the science shows and probably because of all the corporate propaganda from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and Fox News.
The percentage of Democrats who say they worry about global warming, however, is the highest Gallup has recorded since 1989, and even concern about global warming among Republicans is up 11 points since 2004.
Compare the percentage of people concerned about clean water to those who express religious intensity in the polls, an issue which seems to have some salience in Alabama.
Gallup has developed its religious polling over many years based on responses to questions measuring the personal importance of religion and church attendance to American voters.
In an analysis including more than 29,000 interviews, Gallup finds that Republicans outnumber Democrats by 12 percentage points among Americans who are classified as highly religious, while Democrats outnumber Republicans by 30 points among those who are not religious.
“The basic relationship between religiosity and party identification is quite strong and straightforward,” according to Gallup’s report.
The percentage of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party drops from 49 percent among the highly religious to 26 percent among those who are not religious. The percentage who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rises from 37 percent among the highly religious to 56 percent among those who are not religious.
Thus, Gallup concludes, Republicans are in the plurality among highly religious Americans.
Since these polls show very similar results over many years, it is safe to conclude that the picture is not likely to change anytime soon, which has implications for any Democrat trying to win elections by showing religion on their sleeves. Chances are it will backfire, since they will lose support among the party base of non-religious voters, who probably have enough education and experience to know about this American tradition called the separation of church and state.
Of particular import in the governor’s race in Alabama, Gallup’s data shows there are significant differences in the relationship between party identification and religion within racial and ethnic groups.
“Black Americans are highly Democratic, regardless of their religiosity,” according to the Gallup report, which should tell Democrats that they do not need religion to gain the support of African-American voters.
Hispanics also are significantly more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans across religious groups, according to Gallup, “although not as much so as is the case with blacks.”
“Looked at differently,” according to Gallup, “the data make it evident that Republicans are in the clear majority among non-Hispanic white Americans who are either highly religious or religious. Republican and Democratic identification are at rough parity among those classified as less religious. Democrats are clearly in the majority among whites who are not religious.”
Now look at how the numbers actually break down, which I would argue shows a significant disparity from how society is portrayed by the mainstream media much of the time. While the press and broadcast media would have us believe the vast majority of Americans are highly religious and vote on that basis, the actual numbers tell a different story.
According to many years of detailed Gallup research, only 34 percent of Americans are considered “highly religious,” as measured by those who attend church at least once a week and for those who tell pollsters religion is important in their daily lives, including their voting decisions.
Another 18 percent attend church “almost every week or once a month,” but say religion is not so important in how they vote.
Add those two numbers together and you get 52 percent of the American people are highly or somewhat religious.
Compare that to the rest of society, where 32 percent attend church “seldom or never.” While this group admits to pollsters that religion is sort of important in American life, they say it is not important in their voting decisions.
In the last group, 16 percent say they never attend church and declare openly to pollsters that religion is not important at all. This group also happens to report the most education.
Add those numbers together and you get 48 percent, which shows the religious do not outnumber the non-religious in this country nearly as much as the divide is portrayed in the media.
The overall implications of this comparison should be clear, but in case they are not: If only 34 percent of the electorate actually vote on the basis of religion, and 58 percent are concerned about clean water, why do the press and politicians spend more time talking about religion than the environment?
Now, the weakness of this analysis is that these exact questions have not been asked in a statewide poll in Alabama that I know of in the past 15 years or so, maybe never.
I designed and directed a statewide poll in the mid-1990s at the University of Alabama which did ask some of these questions, a survey which showed a high level of support for the environment even in Alabama, which you would not know from listening to the politicians running for office in this state.
As far as I know, there is not one single candidate running for statewide office who mentions the environment as a major issue in their campaign, perhaps forgetting that former Governor Don Siegelman ran every one of his winning statewide campaigns for Lt. Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General on an environmental platform.
I understand Joe Turnham, the chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, got beat up by the Republicans in TV ads for his environmental positions the last time he ran for Congress. But based on this data, I doubt his campaign to move voters to the Democratic Party side of the voting booth on the basis of religion will result in keeping the Republicans from holding the governor’s office and taking over a majority in the legislature this year.
Clearly, this analysis it not complete. I am not aware of any data showing the percentage of voters who favor legalized gambling versus those who don’t, which seems to be developing as a major campaign issue in the governor’s race, although Siegelman did win in 1998 by running for an education lottery. It was voted down by the public, but only after a well-financed campaign to defeat it by the casinos in Mississippi through the Christian Coalition, a group that has been discredited and does not have the same influence today.
What is needed is a new statewide poll asking a lot of questions, including how Alabama voters feel about the environment. I understand there is an effort underway to fund such a poll. We’ll report on it when it becomes available.
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Tags: Air Pollution, Gallup Poll, Global Warming, Public Concern for the Environment, Water Pollution
January 20th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Iroquoian census-building is the solution to good governance. Neither the religious politically-active nor the non-religious politically active seem to remember key injunctions from the Sermon on the Mount, notably “blessed are the peacemakers.”
So long as politics are conducted as sports contests, with two (or more) teams, winners and losers, and continual skirmishes, street fights and drive-by shootings, there will be every imaginable manifestation of human evil accompanying the governance process.
Leading Democratic officials – theoretically on the same team – started locking, loading and aiming their sniper rifles at each other even before Martha Coakley’s defeat yesterday, for instance. Republicans smell blood in the water and are circling like so many sharks. This is nothing new, of course. For at least the last two decades, any shared spirit of what’s good for the country has been gone from Washington, with the number one concern for elected office holders being staying in office, no matter what they have to do.
But this ongoing Darwinian nightmare of special interests, political carnivores and partisan gangsterism will not produce good governance, even accidentally. Hence, my regular reference to the wisdom of the Iroquoian confederacy of the mid-18th century, where consensus and consideration were primary, and which produced excellent, humanistic governance.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Some of our ancestors committed genocide against the Iroquois. What hope do we have of getting from here to there? How?
January 20th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I was living in New Orleans and not around for Turnham’s last run, but if anybody remembers, did he hit back?
January 21st, 2010 at 10:54 am
And some of us, like Glynn and I, have Iroquoian ancestors as well – the Cherokee are an Iroquoian people along with the Shawnee, the Iroquois, and some others.
Getting from here to there would be difficult, but involves first a change in culture, which I believe is underway among ordinary people, culminating with profound changes in the Constitution to reflect Iroquoian consensus-based government.
Once before, America instituted a radical change in the ideological basis of government. It was not quite radical enough, in my opinion, and that has to do with the time, the place and the people involved. Now, at the distance of more than two centuries, we should be able to look at where we are now, and institute further changes to “perfect the union.”
It is no accident that governance in America has degenerated into an ongoing street fight between partisan gangs and special interest groups. That result comes directly from the culture of the country as it has developed over the last century. That fundamental flaw prevents good governance, no matter who is in charge and what their intentions may be.
The alternative, which might happen if conditions worsen to a continuing crisis, is some form of authoritarianism. Just because America has never had an Oliver Cromwell, a Juan Peron, an Antonio Salazar or a Francisco Franco does not mean we never will. Julius Caesar appeared to “rescue” the Roman Republic when it was falling apart in ways not dissimilar to our situation in the US today.
The genocide and marginalization of Native Americans has not only been heinous for them, it has deprived all of us of a vast store of wisdom and humanism that could be of tremendous benefit in the coming century and afterward. That’s not a Luddite call for a return to pre-industrial society, but a call to study and apply that wisdom to our current situation.
So far, political science continues what amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic. A new direction, based on that timeless wisdom perhaps best expressed by the great Native American philosopher Black Elk, is in order.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:24 am
GAMBLING UPDATE: I must not have seen any stories about this survey at the time, but there is major support of legalizing gaming in Alabama.
According to a Capitol Poll survey from the Capitol Survey Research Center, the polling arm of the Alabama Education Association, 82 percent of respondents in Alabama favor legalizing and taxing gambling. Among voters for the Democratic Party, the number is 84 percent, while 83 percent of Independents support the idea and even 82 percent of Republicans do.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:47 am
Doing some more research and housing it here for now.
Environmental activists have been painted as liberal extremists by conservative pundits and crusading underdogs by those on the left — reality, as usual, is somewhere in the middle, according to Gallup.
As the “green” movement continues to mature, those extreme portrayals are becoming largely outdated as mainstream culture comes to grips with the fact that environmental concerns are here to stay, and they must be addressed in ways that everyone can live with.
Demographics
Recent Gallup data on environmental issues provide some insight on the concerns of those who consider themselves “active” in the environmental movement versus those of other Americans.
A study conducted in March 2002 asked respondents,
“Do you think of yourself as an active participant in the environmental movement, sympathetic toward the environmental movement but not active, neutral, or unsympathetic toward the environmental movement?”
About half of all Americans (51%) put themselves in the “sympathetic” category, one-fourth (24%) classify themselves as “neutral” and only 5 percent say they are “unsympathetic” toward the environmental movement.
That leaves about one in five Americans (19%) who say they are “active participants” in the environmental movement.
Looked at another way, if 19 percent are activist environmentalists, and 51 percent are sympathetic to the movement, that means 70 percent of Americans support the environment.
That’s hardly outside the mainstream. In fact, a couple of survey researchers I studied under at the University of Alabama in the mid-1990s said support for a clean environment in the U.S. was as common as “mom and apple pie.”
So much for Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove.
Also, according to Gallup, little difference is observed by subgroup when looking at those who say they are active participants.
For example, roughly the same percentages of men and women say they are active participants. The same holds for age groups from 18 to 64, and all education and income levels.
Even political ideology turns up little difference — 20 percent of liberals say they are active environmentalists, versus 18 percent of moderates and 19 percent of conservatives.
(Although there is an ideological tilt toward the left among the larger group of environmental “sympathizers”: 59% of liberals put themselves in that category, versus 54% of moderates and 45% of conservatives.)