Poll Watch: Climate, Guns and Prejudice

As promised, here's the post highlighting what was learned about climate change, gun control. and prejudice in America from the recent Quinnipiac poll. 

Here's the small print: Quinnipiac University surveyed 1422 self-identified registered voters nationwide August 21-26. Generally, the pollsters conduct live interviews with people on randomly dialed landlines and cell phones. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 3.1percentage points.

The survey shows:

• 56% of registered voters say climate change is an emergency, with both Democrats and Independents believing this; Republicans do not. Further, 67% of registered voters believe the US needs to do more to combat climate change. 

• 72% of voters say Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence - even 50% of Republicans think so. The majority - 60% - thinks we need stricter gun laws.

• 74% of voters think that prejudice against immigrants is at least a somewhat serious issue (23%), with 51% thinking it's a very serious issue.

Let's look at some of the details.

Prejudice.

This section of the survey focused on prejudice against specific groups of people, and whether it's a very serious, somewhat serious, or not so serious problem, or if it's not a problem at all. By political party, the percentages of people saying prejudice is at least a somewhat serious problem falls where you'd expect it to, but the percentages were a little more extreme than I anticipated. 

When you look at it from a 'what's your religion' perspective, the divides are also extreme. 

When a majority of people think that prejudice against whites is a bigger problem than any other kind of prejudice, in a society in which whites are overwhelmingly better off from every measure, we've got our work cut out for us.

Guns.

As we all wait to hear from the president what he wants Congress to do, and we hear from the Democratic candidates what they want to do, here's what we want them to do.

• Universal background checks are supported by +87 (93% to 6%).  Every demographic supports this, even Republicans, at 89% and rural voters at 91%.

• Needing a license to purchase a gun is supported by +66 (82% to 16%); again, every demographic supports this, including Republicans, by +41.

• Red Flag laws are supported by +65 (80% to 15%)

• An assault weapon ban is supported by +24 (60% to 36%),Surprisingly, support for this measure is actually down 3% since the May survey. This was a surprise, given that the mass shootings in Virginia Beach, Dayton, El Paso, and Odessa/Midland, which resulted in 50 deaths and 79 injuries, happened between the two surveys.

• An assault weapon mandatory buyback is underwater by -3 (46% in favor, 49% opposed)

The overall percentage of folks saying more needs to be done, at 67%, is the highest since since the question started being asked back in December 2015.

Support for stricter gun laws comes from across all demographics except for Republicans and gun owners. Men (53%), white men (49%) and whites without college degrees (51%) all support stricter rules. Even rural voters by the slimmest of margins (47% to 46%) support this. And, 

• Almost every demographic (again, Republicans are the outlier, at -10) believe Congress needs to do more. And the overall percentage on this question is up 4 points since it was last asked in March 2018. 

• More people overall, and people of every demographic except Democrats and Blacks, feel that mental illness is a bigger cause of mass shootings than is the availability of guns. 

• Most think that stricter gun laws would help decrease the number of mass shootings, but by generally much slimmer margins than the political party demographic reflects: Dems agree +71, while Reps disagree by +54. 

And no matter what the president says, we do think he has an impact on white supremacists when it comes to motivating them to commit violence. Everyone but folks in the four standard outliers are of one mind on this.

Climate Change.
40% of voters overall (and 15% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 44% of Independents) are worried that someone in their family might be affected by an extreme weather event. The overall percentage is unchanged since this was last asked in December 2018.

By age group, 43% of those 35-49 and 65+ are worried; by race, Hispanics (48%) are the most worried about this. The least worried? Republicans (83%) white men (67%) all men (66%), and whites without college degrees (63%).

On the question of whether we're doing enough, doing too much, or if we need to do more, 91% of Dems and 76% of Independents say we need to do more. In fact, every demographic but one --Republicans, at 32% - believe by a pretty significant margin that we need to do more.

As to whether climate change is an emergency, only Republicans, at 81% saying no, and people 50-64 (50% no, 49% yes) believe it's not. All other demographics believe it is. 

One more thing.
The last question asks whether the respondent feels more safe or less safe with Donald Trump as president or if he doesn't have an impact on a person's sense of safety. By a +20 margin (46% to 26%), people feel less safe with Trump in office. 

#MAGA, or something.