Small Business Support for Clean Energy A Key to 2010 Elections?

by: NRDC Action Fund

Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 09:56 AM CDT

With all that in mind, a recent national survey by Al Quinlan of Greenburg Quinlan Rosner Research has potentially powerful implications for the 2010 elections, providing yet more evidence that climate legislation – despite a fallacious "mainstream media" narrative arguing otherwise – is actually good politics. The key findings are threefold (note: the document talks about strategy for the Democratic Party, but could apply to Republicans as well):

1. Small businesses “are among America’s most popular entities,” with an eye-popping 44:1 favorable to unfavorable ratio (“the highest we have ever seen in our polling on any topic”)
2. Generating support from small business owners, for either political party, is a key to success in the upcoming mid-term elections.
3. Small business owners strongly agree “that a move to clean energy will help restart the economy and lead to job creation by small businesses.” In fact, according to Greenburg Quinlan, “One of the most surprising findings of the survey is that despite the fact that nearly two thirds of business owners believe it would increase costs for their businesses, a majority still want to move forward on clean energy and climate policy.”

As if that’s not evidence enough that there’s broad support out there for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation, how about this Benenson Survey Group survey, conducted in late May/early June 2010? The key findings of this poll are:

• 65% of “likely 2010 voters” believe that “the federal government should invest much more than it currently invests [or] somewhat more than it currently invests.”
• 63% of “likely 2010 voters” support an energy bill that would “limit pollution, invest in domestic energy sources and encourage companies to use and develop clean energy…in part by charging energy companies for carbon pollution in electricity or fuels like gas.”
• Among “undecided voters,” “62% support the bill and just 21% oppose.”
  

There is also strong evidence from this polling that voters – including independent voters by a 2.5:1 margin – are strongly inclined, by around a 2:1 margin, to be “more likely to re-elect” their Senator if he or she voted for a strong, comprehensive, clean energy and climate bill.

In sum, solid majorities of small businesspeople and the public at large both support comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation. Which is why, once again – as we pointed out yesterday – the “mainstream media” narrative, that voting for limits on carbon pollution is bad politics, is just dead wrong. To the contrary, victory this November could go to the candidates – and the party – that seizes this issue and makes it their own. Ideally, it would be great to see both Republicans and Democrats fighting to be the “greenest” candidate, and not just in terms of how much money they raise.

UPDATE: Add another poll to the list, this one by WSJ-NBC indicating that “Respondents favored comprehensive energy and carbon pollution reduction legislation by 63 percent to 31 percent – a two to one margin.”

Poll apalooza, May 2008

by: colin

Sat May 31, 2008 at 09:11 AM CDT

As we all know, national polls are difficult to follow due to the widely-varied methodologies employed by each pollster.

Tables such as this are a fun way to see the often wide spread from one poll to the next.

Andrew Myers and Lauren Spangler at Myers Research/Strategic Services are brilliant pollsters who offer thoughtful input in the drafting stage and incredibly helpful analysis of the results.

They are insanely accurate and I've personally hired them for everything from a Sheriff's race to a Congressional race and worked with them on a handful of state legislative caucuses.

If you need a poll, check them out at http://www.myersandpartners.com/.

Check out the tables after the jump.  I have battleground state polling tables also compiled by Myers Research/Strategic Services if you have a particular state you are interested, I'll be happy to post it.

Results of Final SurveyUSA TX Tracking Poll Released

by: reg

Mon Mar 03, 2008 at 11:31 AM CST

Before the editorializing, the big numbers:

If the Democratic primary were held today, would you vote for Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? Or some other Democrat?

Clinton - - Obama - - Other
 48%        49%       2%

The first interesting tidbit:

6 hours till votes are counted in the Texas Democratic Primary, contest is a Jump Ball, with Obama's momentum now slowed, and possibly stalled...

This comment seems to be based on tightening margins throughout the poll's tracking, but for those of us on the ground in Texas, there is no indication that Obama's momentum has slowed. While record early vote turnout cannot itself measure support for one candidate, it is certainly a sign that there is tremendous interest and backing for both candidates.

Another interesting note:

For Obama to carry the state's popular vote (convention delegates are not awarded as a straight function of the popular vote), Obama needs to run at least 3 points stronger than Clinton among those who vote at the precinct tomorrow.

Given Senator Obama's history with caucuses, this is certainly an achievable margin. However, the importance of Texas to the Clinton campaign has drawn a surge of Hillary volunteers both from Texas, and from around the nation. At the end of the day, however, numbers may not be able to make up for the superior organization that Senator Obama's campaign has displayed in every caucus contest.

Other takeaways from the poll include:

- The survey breaks up the results into four age groups, and Senator Clinton leads in every one, except those between the ages of 18 and 34. However, her only significant lead is with voters over the age of 65, where she has 22 percentage point lead.

- Among those who responded with a party affiliation, Senator Obama leads among those who identify Republican 60% to 36%.

- Senator Obama also has a significant lead among those that identify themselves as independents: 55% to 41%.

- Among those that identified the economy as the top issue in the election, the candidates split the votes: 49%-49%

- Where Iraq and Terrorism were identified as the top issue in the election, voters overwhelmingly preferred Senator Obama.

         Iraq - - Terrorism
Obama    57%       62%
Clinton   42%       30%

These voters were interviewed Saturday and Sunday, after Senator Clinton had put her new national security ad into play. However, the surveys may be too close to judge the ad's impact, if it has any.

There's more and more to take away from the poll, and I can leave a lot of that to you as you go through the numbers. In case you missed the link above, the full break down can be found here.

UPDATE

I went back to find the previous two SUSA polls, and have noted some interesting trends below the fold.  

Splitting Texas 9 ways and the 2006 Gubernatorial Race

by: RBH

Tue Oct 10, 2006 at 02:17 PM CDT

North Texas: 31%
West Texas: 7%
Harris County: 15%
East Texas: 47%

Sure, there are some obvious questions, such as "When did Austin become East Texas?" or "When did Laredo become East Texas?".

So, let's look at a 9-way split of the state for a moment..