Via the Huffington Post:
Here’s a wake-up call for the White House: A new pollfinds that most people who voted for President Obama in November oppose the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
The numbers are striking, and if this was an election, it’d be a clear mandate. Some 68 percent of Obama voters oppose building the pipeline, 76 percent are concerned about its contribution to climate change, and 57 percent believe approval would break the president’s State of the Union vow to fight climate change.
The national poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling on March 15, 16 and 17. It included 1,122 voters of all kinds and 536 people who voted for Obama in the 2012 election. The poll has a margin of error of + or – 2.9 percent.
The poll of Obama voters also found that 61 percent said they’d feel “disappointed” or “betrayed” if the president approves Keystone and that 69 percent said Obama’s legacy should be about clean-energy innovation and solving climate change rather than expanding oil, gas and natural gas production.
The question now is whether the president will heed the call – and the tens of thousands of people who marched on the White House earlier this year – or give into the oil industry’s wishes.
But before Obama makes his Keystone decision, Congress may have its say, possibly as early as this week as the U.S. Senate hammers out the national budget.
The new poll has something for that too: A majority of Americans (53 percent) say they oppose any congressional intervention in the Keystone issue.
The rest here.