Thursday, February 4, 2010 5:16 PM
Poll: Brown Voters Support Cap-and-Trade
By Kevin Friedl and Christopher Snow Hopkins, NationalJournal.com
Scott Brown's unlikely victory in Massachusetts may have reinvigorated the Republican Party, but one polling company says that's no guarantee the freshman senator will join his caucus in opposing cap-and-trade legislation.
Joel Benenson, of the Benenson Strategy Group (D), today presented new polling data conducted on behalf of the Climate Protection Action Fund -- an affiliate of Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection -- that shows a majority of Massachusetts independent voters support a bill that includes a mandatory cap on emissions.
The poll, conducted the week after Brown won the special election to fill Edward Kennedy's former Senate seat, surveyed 500 Massachusetts voters who had gone to the polls that day. It found that 67 percent of all respondents favored a bill "that limits pollution and greenhouse emissions through what's been called a 'cap and trade' plan and also invests in clean, renewable energy sources in America." Sixty-one percent of independent voters agreed, along with half of those who voted for Brown (36 percent disagreed).
Benenson argued that Brown's win "was predicated on strong performance with independent voters," and pointed to their support for cap-and-trade to urge the senator-elect to adopt "sound environmental policy" in keeping with their wishes, rather than interpret the vote as a repudiation of the Democrats' proposals for containing climate change.
Starting tomorrow, the group plans to air a television ad in Massachusetts urging Brown to support climate legislation.
More survey results are available from Benenson here.
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