A✌️473-word✌️under 3-minute✌️read
I strive to take subjectivity out of the decision-making process. That’s why I always look for trusted data to help formulate positions. So I’m drawn to stats and polls. The trick is knowing good data from bad. That takes work, and dare I say – experience.
This morning a Semafor snippet caught my attention. It summarized a Gallop poll on American’s opinion of U.S. business including the federal government.
There have been a number of such polls published recently, but two aspects of this one are noteworthy.
Before discussing the results, let’s to the work and look at the poll’s parameters. Most importantly, its margin of error.
The random sample of 1,094 adults was conducted in August by telephone. Telephone interviews are tricky these days because only old people continue to have land lines. And if a pollster attempts to call a cell phones, caller-ID becomes a headwind.
However, I trust Gallup has adjusted for current circumstances in their margin of error and confidence calculations. In this case the margin of error is ±4 percentage at a 95% confidence level. That means any result could be 4 percentage points higher or lower, resulting in a possible 8 percentage point spread.
A little wide for my taste.
The first noteworthy result was the view of the federal government.
Under any circumstances this will be negative because supporters of the party out of power tend to be negative no matter what. But the poll result was 23% positive/somewhat positive while the combined negative result was 61%.
These numbers are particularly poor. It means that even those who voted for the party in power aren’t exactly doing the happy dance with the results coming out of Washington.
That’s interesting, but here’s what really caught my eye as it’s particularly relevant to the climate community.
The industry that most closely rivals the federal government in terms of a negative view is – no, not the oil and gas industry – but the Pharmaceutical industry.
The Pharmaceutical industry had a combined negative rating of 58% versus 43% for oil and gas.
Even in the worst-case margin of error scenario where the Pharma number is 4 percentage points too high and the oil and gas number is 4 percentage points too low, the spread would still be 5 percentage points in favor of Big Pharma.
Why is this important to the climate movement?
Because it has spent years attempting to vilify oil and gas, yet to the average adult American, Pharma is more loathed.
Why?
Because drug prices consistently impact people’s wallets, and healthcare is front and center in many people’s minds.
Conversely, if the price of gas isn’t spiking, people don’t view Big Oil in a particularly negative light.
My advice to the climate community: moving forward, ponder that when formulating your strategy and messaging.
Here's a summary of the poll results:
#gallup #oilandgasdindustry #phramceuticalindustry