Red, Green, and Blue

President Barack Obama scored a big one in a Gallup Poll conducted in the middle of March. According to the results, which were released yesterday, 79 percent of Americans think that he will do a good job in handling environmental issues, compared to the 51 percent that George W. Bush received eight years ago at the start of his presidency.

Obama, unlike Bush eight years ago, received a lot of help from the opposite political party: The poll shows that 65 percent of Republicans believe Obama will do a good job, whereas only 36 percent of Democrats thought the same about Bush. This Republican support for Obama, though, is nowhere near the support from the Democratic side. The Gallup poll shows that 95 percent of Democrats think that Obama is on the right track with the environment.

On the other hand, the poll showed that only 32 percent of those Republicans who answered that Obama will do a good job with the environment approved of his overall actions as president.

These numbers about popular support for Obama’s environmental goals, though, are a little misleading. The Gallup poll also indicated that only 2 percent of those surveyed said that the environment was the most critical issue facing the country. The 2001 poll about Bush’s presidency had the same result, showing that overall, the environment hasn’t really gotten anywhere in the public mind.

Photo Credit: a35mmlife at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

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