NREL
Last week, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) released partial results of a poll they commissioned to gauge public opinion about the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new ozone standards. The headline of their press release, “More Americans Concerned with Economic Harm of Increasing Federal Regulations Than Environmental Benefit,” certainly caught my attention. This claim runs counter to most other national surveys we have seen recently, which demonstrate strong bipartisan support for environmental and public health protections including the Clean Power Plan’s carbon pollution limits and stronger national ozone standards.
As always, I turned to the data itself for a clearer understanding of the poll’s findings. Unfortunately, NAM declined to release the full results of this poll, which was conducted by FTI Consulting. Without full transparency in survey methods and sampling demographic results, it is impossible to fully vet the quality of this poll and its findings.
For example, we cannot take a look at question ordering. As the Association of Public Opinion Research states on their website, "In some surveys, the order of the questions may be designed to ‘lead’ the respondent to a kind of conclusion that produces a predictable response." We have seen some industry polls use strange question ordering to prime respondents to answer later questions in a certain way. Moreover, we cannot look at the demographics of the final survey sample. Did it closely match the demographic profile of the national electorate? We would assume so, but it is impossible to check without full survey results.
Transparency issues aside, the one-page polling memo released by NAM did include a handful of the survey questions and response options. The headline finding that Americans are more concerned about the “economic harm of increasing federal regulations” than on “the environmental benefit” appears to be based on the following question:
What do you see as the bigger problem for your local area?
Less economic growth and job opportunities caused by regulations (66%)
Lower air quality caused by pollution (23%)
This is an odd poll question, and the stark results demonstrate that question wording and answer choices can have a significant effect on survey results. This question is confusing at best; is it asking someone whether the economy or low air quality is a bigger problem in their area? Or, is it asking whether people think potential economic harm from “regulations” outweighs positive impacts on air quality? NAM’s interpretation of the survey results seems to indicate the latter. But if I heard this question in a phone survey, I’d probably interpret it the first way.
It is no secret that Americans are anxious about the health of the U.S. economy; in national polls, jobs and the economy top nearly every list of national priorities.
Pollsters have long understood that Americans are more likely to be opposed to “regulations” in the abstract than they are to be opposed to specific environmental and public health protections. One of the clearest examples of this tendency comes from a survey released by Pew Research Center in 2012. While the data is now a few years old, it offers a unique glimpse into the complex world of environmental public opinion.
According to the survey, 52 percent of American adults believed that, in general, “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.” Just four-in-ten (40 percent) said that government regulation is “necessary to protect the public interest.” But at the same time, the survey found little public appetite for reducing federal regulations in specific areas, including environmental protection. Half of those surveyed (50 percent) said that federal regulations in the area of “environmental protection” should be strengthened, while 29 percent thought they should be kept the same as they are now. Just 17 percent said that they should be reduced.
While many Americans are wary of regulations in the abstract, the public tends to support specific environmental protections. And NAM’s survey question asks about generic regulation, but they interpreted the results as if it had tested support for a specific environmental rule (a stronger national ozone standard).
Dozens of national surveys have recently demonstrated strong public support for environmental and public health protections, including the Clean Power Plan’s carbon pollution limits and stronger national ozone standards. According to a 2014 Washington Post/ABC News poll, 70 percent of U.S. adults say the federal government should limit "greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming.” Moreover, 60 percent think the federal government should limit the release of greenhouse gases even if it "significantly lowered greenhouse gases but raised your monthly energy expenses by 20 dollars a month."
When it comes to ozone standards, nearly seven-in-ten voters (68 percent) support the EPA setting "stricter limits on the amount of smog that power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities can release,” according to a November 2014 survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research on behalf of the American Lung Association. And Americans do not see environmental protection and economic growth as mutually exclusive. Three-in-five Americans (69 percent) believe that, in the long-run, protecting the environment will "improve economic growth and provide new jobs," according to recent polling from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
In short, this one industry-sponsored survey -- the full results of which have not been publicly released -- does not disprove what dozens of other polls have found: the American public is largely supportive of environmental protections that protect the public and the environment from dangerous corporate air and water pollution.