In a Siena College poll last month, support for hydrofracking in parts of upstate tied its high: 42 percent to 36 percent said they favored it.
Today’s Siena College poll, however, showed an eight percentage point swing: 44 percent opposed it to 40 percent that supported it. And that was a high in terms of opposition since Siena started asking the question last May.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo was unswayed today by the swaying of the polls. Essentially, it’s a divisive issue, he suggested.
“It’s not going to be a decision made on the polling data,” Cuomo said today on the Capitol Pressroom, a public radio show. Cuomo said the health review on hydrofracking, which is expected to end next month, is continuing.
Hydrofracking has been on hold in New York since 2008.
Anti-frackers said the Siena poll today showed a shift in public sentiment. The largest opposition—51 percent—came from upstate, the poll said.
“As New Yorkers break through the gas industry’s multi-million dollar propaganda campaign and learn the truth about fracking, they oppose it,” said New Yorkers Against Fracking in a statement.
The state’s Petroleum Council said the polls really haven’t changed much, saying that on Election Day, pro-fracking candidates were elected across the Southern Tier.
“Creating jobs, generating millions in revenues for local schools and the state, and saving family farms and lifting whole communities—those are facts that makes safe natural gas development the inevitable choice for New York,” said the group’s executive director, Karen Moreau.
3 Comments
asking one college does not count as a pole on this issue
A lot of mileage out of one misstatement by Ms. Moreau! She keeps repeating, and the media keep quoting, the claim that pro-frackers won the November elections in the southern tier. How then to explain why the Landowner Coalition’s Vice President was creamed by Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo? Because INCUMBENTS and MONEY won, not pro-frackers.
Look at the numbers in Jon’s post. The 8-point swing against fracking, compared to the December poll, looks like it came from 2 points of “support” moving to “oppose,” and SIX points of “don’t know enough” moving to “oppose”! New Yorkers Against Fracking’s statement is exactly right: The more New Yorkers learn about fracking, the more they oppose it.
Please be more precise in your articles. Only HIGH VOLUME hydraulic fracturing is on hold. Drilling and low volume hydraulic fracturing have been and still are legal under rules formulated under the GEIS. There are over 14,000 active wells in NY, and over 90% of those have been stimulated through hydraulic fracturing. That drilling and hydraulic fracturing are legal and have been performed for many years seems to be conveniently overlooked.