Rasmussen poll finds 75% say US not doing enough to develop its gas and oil resources; 49% say increasing supply is better policy than reducing demand
29 June 2011
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 75% do not think the country is doing enough to develop its own gas and oil resources. These findings are virtually unchanged from late February.
49% said, when given the choice, that increasing the supply of oil by finding new sources is a better energy policy than reducing demand by cutting gas and oil consumption. Forty-two percent (42%) believe reducing the demand for oil is the better energy policy.
The gap between the two was a bit wider in June 2008, when 39% said reducing demand was more important and 47% preferred increasing the supply. But a majority of voters for years have said finding new sources of energy is more important than reducing the amount of energy Americans consume. At the same time, most voters believe investment in renewable energy sources like solar wind is the best long-term solution the nation’s energy issue.
Republicans and voters not affiliated with either party believe more strongly than Democrats that America is not doing enough to develop its own gas and oil resources. But sizable majorities across all demographic categories share this belief.
Most Democrats (59%) favor reducing demand for oil over increasing the supply through development of new sources. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans think increasing the supply is the better policy to follow. Unaffiliated voters are evenly divided on this question.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of Political Class voters say reducing the demand for oil is the better energy policy, while 52% of Mainstream prefer the opposite approach.
This past April, one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, most voters (59%) were again supportive of deepwater drilling. Two-out-of-three voters (67%) support offshore drilling. Fifty-five percent (55%) oppose President Obama’s seven-year ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in part of the Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast.
One-in-two Americans are ready to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to lessen the country’s dependence on foreign oil. However, only 38% think the United States is even somewhat likely to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by the year 2025, a goal set by the president in an energy plan earlier this year.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters US Voters was conducted on 26–27 June 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
How depressing. Just get the gas, we don't care what the cost.
Posted by: danm | 29 June 2011 at 01:28 PM
Drill baby drill is still around. Is it the answer to USA's current financial ++ crisis?
Posted by: HarveyD | 29 June 2011 at 01:46 PM
The Obama Administration's expensive energy policy is a slap in the face to the working poor, which used to be a core constituency of the Democratic Party. I think even the working poor understand that increasing supply will bring down prices - and they will turn on Obama in 2012 if they are still getting crushed by energy and feel like they have no upward mobility thanks to Obama-Biden jobs killing policies.
Posted by: ejj | 29 June 2011 at 04:34 PM
While I support cheap energy, I also support maximum competition & energy independence, and government policies should be designed to maximize competition / energy independence. To that end, I would support making all renewable energy companies tax-exempt until further notice...until renewable energy is equally competitive with conventional energy - then you could slowly raise their taxes again.
Posted by: ejj | 29 June 2011 at 05:04 PM
"We were able to, under President Obama's leadership, turn this economy around" - Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chair, Democratic National Committee
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=81LNYY25A9Y&vq=medium
Posted by: ejj | 29 June 2011 at 06:11 PM
Supply and demand have not been used to set crude oil price for 40+ years. After 50+ years of extremely cheap oil (set by our own oil firms), OPEC and other producers have decided to set the price (themselves) as high as the market can support by adjusting production level to artificially create a low supply situation.
We can thank Saudi Arabia for limiting the escalating process by opening the valves. Otherwise, we would already be paying $200+/barrel.
That would not be such a bad thing because the majority would quickly buy more efficient vehicles. HEVs, PHEVs and BEVs would be every where in very large numbers. We would use and import less oil. Alternative fuels would have a field day.
One bad/good news, food cost could follow the same price hike. Since we produce more food than we need, higher world food prices would be good for USA and a few other countries with food surpluses.
Something as negative as higher oil price may turn out to be positive for a few countries, at least for a short time.
Posted by: HarveyD | 29 June 2011 at 06:26 PM
This pole does not show that big of a split.
I believe and hope most agree that any/all efficiencies are a win-win.
But in Obama speek:
* New jobs means wiping out existing jobs
* Decreased oil dependence means don't drill.
* Spending and spending and then raising taxes is balancing the budget.
* Higher unemployment is an opportunuty for more entitlements
* Entitlements are the holy grail.
Posted by: ToppaTom | 29 June 2011 at 08:25 PM
Our last GOP president decried that "America is addicted to oil!!!" So, the way to cure an addiction is to increase the supply instead of reducing the demand? With such an ill-informed populace, no wonder that we are losing the war on drugs, or to addictions to anything...
This clearly points to much more efforts at educating the public the crucial need for reducing oil and gas demand via increase energy efficiency and escalating renewable energy deployment and development.
Posted by: Roger Pham | 29 June 2011 at 11:31 PM
I think it's possible to have both. Reduce demand, through stringent efficiency standards, not price mechanisms to ensure demand management is socially equal and not elitist (i.e. affordable only to the rich). Then develop supply in a way that is ready to bring onstream as and when needed with a good thrust towards altarnatives.
As an aside, in a globalised world, the use of the term "foreign" oil always amazes me, as applying the word "foreign" in other contexts does have racial overtones. After all we're all eagre to buy other products from our shops which may have a home brand but is usually produced abroad. Don't forget that.
Posted by: Scott | 30 June 2011 at 02:28 AM
Scott has it right, with oil being so fungible on the global market any effort at energy security by drilling for more oil will fail because the lowest price wins. America's easy(re: cheap) oil is gone. Drilling deeper costs more. Drilling in environmentally sensitive areas cost more. Converting coal, natural gas, bitumen or shale into oil costs more. Importing light sweet crude from the Saudis is cheaper.
Posted by: ai_vin | 30 June 2011 at 08:17 AM
Rasmussen has been long outed as a craptastic right-leaning poll agency directed tied to the GOP agenda. ALL of its results defer to Republican viewpoints.
I'd like to see the exact questions asked and exactly what demographic they polled.
Posted by: sheckyvegas | 30 June 2011 at 02:19 PM
Okay, I went to the site and scanned the questions. There were only five and fairly generic. The one that stood out was #5 - "Which is the better approach to an energy policy—reducing demand by reducing the amount of gas and oil that we consume? Or increasing the supply of oil by finding more sources of gas and energy?"
So the questions don't appear skewed in themselves (unless somebody out there sees something I don't). However, I'd still like to check the demos. Nothing specific on their website about that.
Posted by: sheckyvegas | 30 June 2011 at 02:24 PM
Maybe what you're not seeing shecky is the change in wording:
The question they asked was "Which is the better approach to an energy policy—reducing demand by reducing the amount of gas and oil that we consume? Or increasing the supply of oil by finding more sources of gas and energy?"
The results they reported was "The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 75% do not think the country is doing enough to develop its own gas and oil resources."
Could this be an example of 'bait&switch?'
Posted by: ai_vin | 30 June 2011 at 09:33 PM
Likely, yes.
Of course, given that the USA currently has 300 years of current energy needs sitting in warehouses (as the depleted uranium tailings from enrichment since the Manhattan project), getting more energy doesn't necessarily mean drilling or mining a thing. Unfortunately, the public doesn't understand this, and the pollsters are in the pockets of the same big-money interests which killed coal's competition in the first place.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 01 July 2011 at 02:38 AM
Ok, last night I asked a friend of mine (someone who's actually in a position to know how polls work) how a pollster with an agenda might bias the results and she told me there were lots of ways.
First off, in a telephone poll like this one you get a different demographics if you call landlines instead of cells.
Second, you get different members of the household(demographics again) if you phone before 5pm than after 5.
Third, even if you phone after 5 you can bias the results by timing your calls to the TV schedule (like before a show that's popular with your target demographic) and you'll get different answers if you call after the nightly news when whoever you call will have the issues of the day fresh in their minds.
You'll also get different answers from the same people if the person you hire to make the calls has a "tell" - like a strong accent, a kindly old lady voice, a young student voice, etc. rather than someone who sounds nondescript.
And those are only a few of the ways.
Posted by: ai_vin | 01 July 2011 at 09:26 AM
In other news...the average American has the IQ of a kumquat, and the self discipline of a 5 year old.
God, we are so Eff'ing screwed. We have become too stupid and self centered to do anything to fix our own problems.
Posted by: DaveD | 01 July 2011 at 03:38 PM
Whine whine whine... Old school totalitarianism and grandiosity masquerading as altruism. That game is over. The only energy challenge now is to work out who gets to build, install and maintain the hundreds of millions of new energy appliances coming to market.
MIT has confirmed over unity energy from LANR/CF “Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction/Cold Fusion.” And it spells the death knell for fossil fuels and centralized power plants. The world will transition to distributed electrification confirming the planet's new directive to Energy Independence.
Essentially, game over. We win.
Posted by: Reel$$ | 01 July 2011 at 07:17 PM
Anyone expecting cold fusion to come to our rescue has got a long wait.
Posted by: ai_vin | 01 July 2011 at 09:22 PM
Sounds an awful lot like oilco LANR cold fusion denial ai_vin...
Posted by: Reel$$ | 02 July 2011 at 09:21 PM
Hey, I'd love for the thing to work... but as there are only about two dozen scientists in all the world who still believe it does, against hundreds who don't, the burden of proof isn't on me.
Get back to me when those numbers reverse and I'll be on board faster than you can say "I told you so."
Posted by: ai_vin | 03 July 2011 at 08:34 AM
I will believe it when I see it deployed on a large scale.
Posted by: SJC | 03 July 2011 at 01:54 PM
Of course it's possible to have both.
Reduce demand, through stringent efficiency standards, because the buyer sees that the inefficient appliance is a smarter financial choice - but the regulation is needed for national economic security and the cost (to force the higher efficiency) is not great.
And develop supply to be able to thwart the (so far) wobbly OPEC.
“Foreign” means mostly the portion of the Arab world which wishes us ill, and also, partly, the entire Arab world which has little difficulty not feeling guilty about that.
And Nicaragua.
It also means ”non-US”, including Canada.
Either way foreign (oil) means money going out – not a good thing to anyone with sense.
Posted by: ToppaTom | 03 July 2011 at 02:47 PM