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The Real News About the Marist Opinion Poll on Marcellus Shale Drilling in New York State

Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY) just completed a statewide poll in New York State to find out if residents generally support or generally oppose hydraulic fracturing. MDN has embedded the poll results below so you can read it for yourself. The standard coverage of this poll in the media, the “big news” if you will, is that New Yorkers are about evenly split: 41 percent generally oppose hydraulic fracturing, and 38 percent support it—a statistical dead heat with the margin of error +/- 5 percent. Marist says a “notable” 21 percent are unsure. But MDN believes the “real news” in this poll is confirmation that the shale gas drilling debate in New York—and nationwide—is (sadly) more about politics than science and common sense. The proof is in the numbers.

The first question asked those who were surveyed was:

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