It could be a coincidence this came out less than a week after an identical poll found this:
Pennsylvania voters continue to be split over fracking. A poll out this week, which surveyed 700 likely voters in September, shows 58% support a ban on fracking while 42% oppose it.
But both are outside each other’s margin of error, it’s a big difference.
Pennsylvania is a big state, with a lot of people who depend on fracking for economic stability, and a lot of people who don’t. For those who depend on fracking, it’s a deal-breaker issue. They will not vote for a politician who supports a ban on fracking. For most of the voters who do support a ban on fracking, it is not a deal-breaker issue. They can still support a politician who supports fracking.
Fracking is bad for the environment, and should at the very least be tightly regulated. Currently, there are very few regulations or restrictions about what chemicals can be pumped into the ground, because the working theory is that the fracking is done at a depth where the chemicals could not rise to the groundwater level. There is also extremely lax enforcement of the existing regulations related to well construction and decommissioning, or waste disposal.
Polls are unreliable, because the sampling is never truly random. There are always too many confounding variables that can distort the data and skew results. But if you take enough polls, and combine the results, you approach something resembling information.
Pennsylvania is a big state, with a lot of people who depend on fracking for economic stability
Factually untrue, but I only saw your comment because I hadn’t signed in yet, it seems you’re already on my block list but wanted to provide the answer for others:
https://lemmy.world/comment/12884593
I did the math yesterday, 0.5% of people in PA work in any field related to fossil fuels.
The confusion is it’s an absolute shit ton of state gdp, it’s just very few people are employed in the I dustry and most make bad pay in terrible conditions.
But fossil fuel production can’t exactly pack up a mountain and .over it to a friendlier state like other industries.
