Among the total American public, 48% say that the federal government is doing\u00a0\u201ctoo little\u00a0\u2026 in terms of protecting the environment\u201d; 34% say that it\u2019s doing\u00a0\u201cthe right amount\u201d; and only 16% say that it\u2019s doing\u00a0\u201ctoo much.\u201d So, clearly, the public greatly favors increased environmental protection by\u00a0\u201cthe U.S. government.\u201d However, whereas 64% of Democrats feel that the government is doing\u00a0\u201ctoo little,\u201d only 39% of Republicans do; and so, the partisan divide on this issue is stark.<\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, the U.S. general public give higher priority to (49% opt for) \u201cEnvironment\u201d over (39% opt for) \u201cDevelopment of U.S. energy supplies\u201d; but among Republicans, 62% favor\u00a0\u201cDevelopment of U.S. energy supplies,\u201d and only 27% favor\u00a0\u201cEnvironment.\u201d By contast: 72% of Democrats favor\u00a0\u201cEnvironment,\u201d and only 18% favor\u00a0\u201cDevelopment of U.S. energy supplies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Basically, the reason why the overall U.S. public prefers protecting the environment over boosting U.S. energy-production, is that Democrats are more lopsided for protecting the environment than Republicans are lopsided for boosting energy-production.<\/span><\/p>\n This partisan divide has always been high, but is now a bit higher than normal. The divide was at its highest during the period from 2004 to 2006. The divide was smaller in 2000 than at any other time during Gallup\u2019s polling on the matter, which started in 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n Independents (neither\u00a0\u201cDemocrat\u201d nor\u00a0\u201cRepublican\u201d) have always been closer to Democrats than to Republicans on these issues; and, in 2012 (the last Presidential campaign), Independents were almost identical to Democrats on them.<\/span><\/p>\n If, during the 2016 campaign, the Republican candidate fails to moderate his position more toward the environment, the Democratic candidate will have a major vulnerability to exploit against the Republican\u2019s campaign. If the Democrat exploits that advantage, there will be little likelihood that Independents\u00a0\u2013 the crucial voting-segment\u00a0\u2013 will swing Republican that year.<\/span><\/p>\n The environment has always been a low-priority concern of American voters, but energy-production is an even lower-priority concern. And that, plus the highly Democratic slant of Independents on those two issues, could turn that low-priority concern into a kingmaker (or queenmaker) in the 2016 campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are Gallup\u2019s four graphs and charts summarizing their findings:<\/span><\/p>\n My most complete summary of Gallup’s findings on the partisan political divide was titled\u00a0\u201cGallup Poll Finds Democrats More\u00a0Compassionate<\/span>; Republicans More\u00a0Psychopathic.<\/span>“<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n ———-<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of\u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse A Gallup poll issued on April 13th headlines\u00a0\u201cAmericans Choose the\u00a0Environment Over Energy\u00a0Development,\u201d\u00a0and on April 9th another report from Gallup was titled\u00a0\u201cAbout Half in U.S. Say\u00a0Environmental Protection Falls\u00a0Short.\u201d\u00a0The bottom-line from both findings is that “the U.S. government” isn\u2019t doing enough to protect the environment but is doing too much to boost energy-production. Republicans feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":145751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[29,928,927,851,77,540],"class_list":{"0":"post-145750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-gas-2","13":"tag-oil","14":"tag-republicans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-5.32.17-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-5.32.50-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-5.36.43-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-5.37.49-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n