Josh Nelson

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.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the answer is no. On Thursday I documented a blatantly false Bloomberg news story designed to mislead readers about the level of support for President Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling. Bloomberg’s poll (PDF), which the story was based on, asked the following (bottom of page five): “Do you think the spill proves off-shore drilling is just too dangerous and should be banned in U.S. waters, or was this a freak accident and offshore drilling can be made safer and should not be banned?” Based on this question, the Bloomberg headline blared: Americans in 73% Majority Oppose Deepwater Drilling Ban. The story begins, “Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama’s ban on deepwater oil drilling in response to BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico spill…” Bloomberg made the same false claim two days later in a Businessweek story.

Obviously, there is a huge difference between an indefinite ban on all offshore drilling and President Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling. Regardless, Bloomberg polled about the former and reported on the latter. And frankly, I use the word ‘reported’ extremely loosely here. What Bloomberg actually did is fabricate public opinion information on a highly contested public policy issue that is currently being considered in some form by all three branches of government. This is important because political actors, both within Congress and the Obama Administration, may look to public opinion polls like this one to determine the proper course of action.

I’m not alone in finding Bloomberg’s reporting on this poll to be highly objectionable. Several thoughtful observers have taken note, criticizing Bloomberg’s coverage on the similar grounds. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones writes, “This is stunningly bad journalism… The Bloomberg results make for an exciting headline, but that’s about it. Correlation with reality is pretty close to zero.” At Media Matters, Eric Boehlert explains, “There’s an apples-and-oranges problem here that Bloomberg News ought to acknowledge and correct.” The Washington Post’s Jon Cohen adds, “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.” And Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism writes, “I could tell from the mere headline that the poll question was inept and/or unduly suggestive.”

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.

The Washington Post published an article on Monday entitled, ‘Historic oil spill fails to produce gains for U.S. environmentalists.’ It was immediately picked up by several liberal bloggers whose opinion I respect, each of whom seemed to take the article’s conclusion at face value. But while the article gets some things right, it also includes several misleading lines of argument in order to bolster its attention-grabbing headline.

I’ll outline a few of those arguments below, and explain why each is so misleading.

Misleading Argument 1: While previous environmental disasters have prompted legislative action, the still-ongoing spill in the Gulf of Mexico has failed to do so.

Here is how the Washington Post article makes this argument:

Traditionally, American environmentalism wins its biggest victories after some important piece of American environment is poisoned, exterminated or set on fire. An oil spill and a burning river in 1969 led to new anti-pollution laws in the 1970s. The Exxon Valdez disaster helped create an Earth Day revival in 1990 and sparked a landmark clean-air law.

But this year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history — and, before that, the worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years — haven’t put the same kind of drive into the debate over climate change and fossil-fuel energy.

The Santa Barbara oil spill took place in January 1969. The Cuyahoga River fire took place in June 1969. Here are the major pieces of legislation that were passed in response, along with the amount of time that lapsed between the environmental disasters and their respective Congressional approval:

Peter Daou asks:

For reference, here is the Drudge headline Daou was referring to:

And here is the data on 2010 being the hottest year on record.

To answer Daou’s question: it is extremely absurd, but at the same time, utterly predictable. But the underlying question is why Drudge (and other Republicans) would continue highlighting such stories when all available evidence supports the fact that climate change is real and already having an impact.

For the modern Republican party, particularly when it comes to environmental issues, facts are pesky annoyances that have no bearing on public policy. To explore another example of this, let’s take a peek under the hood of some polling on offshore drilling and the oil spill.

On 3/31-4/1, Rasmussen asked (premium account required) 1,000 likely voters if they were concerned that offshore drilling would cause environmental problems.

As you can see, while 70% of Democrats were at least somewhat concerned, just 31% of Republicans felt the same way. Now, this was before 100+ million gallons of oil (and counting) gushed into the Gulf of Mexico as a direct result of offshore drilling. We now have a current and extremely vivid example of offshore drilling actually causing major environmental problems. Indeed, by nearly all accounts the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst environmental disaster in American history. So, how have likely voters, Republican and Democrat alike, adjusted their beliefs in the wake of this disaster?

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.

In wide-ranging interview published today by the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, House Minority Leader John Boehner told the paper’s editors that President Obama had ‘overreacted’ to the still-gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

Boehner said Obama overreacted to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill might warrant a “pause” in deepwater drilling, but Obama’s blanket ban on drilling in the gulf — which a judge overturned last week — could devastate the region’s economy, he said.

This is a change in tune from the GOP’s previous line of attack — claiming the President did not respond to the disaster quickly and forcefully enough. Here are some statements John Boehner and his top deputies in the House have made to that effect in recent weeks:

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), May 27th:

“Even now, nearly two months after disaster first struck, the federal response remains inadequate and disorganized. Americans are rightly angry about this failure of government, and they want to know that their president is focused squarely on stopping this leak, cleaning up this mess, and finding out what went wrong.”

Speaking at a sparsely-attended luncheon in Fairbanks, AK on Friday, Senator Murkowski (R-AL) touted her failed effort to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions as a ‘badge of honor.’ She went on to explain why she considered the maneuver, which went down by a 53-47 margin on June 10th, a qualified success. “We made our point. Forty-seven members of the Senate said they do not want to allow the agency to set climate change policy,” she said.

As luck would have it, another institution has plans to ‘set climate change policy’ in the weeks ahead — the United States Senate. And fortunately for Senator Murkowski, as a United States Senator, she has the power to influence that process as it plays out. By all indications, Senator Murkowski should be a leading Republican in these negotiations. In response to the announcement of a new Climate Science Center at the University of Alaska earlier this year, she rightly called the state ‘ground zero for climate change.’ Last September Murkowski told reporters that Congress needs to work on climate change but should take its time considering options. And by all accounts, the Senate has done just that in the past nine months, trying and giving up on a variety of approaches deemed too controversial to attract significant Republican support.

But now there are a several proposals and a handful of standalone measures on the table. A group of seventeen Senators — which includes Senator Murkowski — will be meeting with President Obama Tuesday to discuss a path forward. Majority Leader Reid has indicated he’ll be moving the legislation immediately after July recess.

If Senator Murkowski intends to play a constructive role in this process, her opportunity is now. Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Senator Murkowski, claims she intends to play such a role, citing her support of Senator Lugar’s energy legislation. According to Dillon, Murkowski supports “Sen. Lugar’s latest efforts to address climate.” Perhaps sensing the angle I was pursuing, he added, “so any accusation that she opposes dealing with emissions is completely false.”

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)

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: