Poll: Support fades for oil drilling ban as spill is plugged

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With oil no longer gushing from the BP well in the gulf, support for a constitutional ban on drilling in Florida waters is fading, most surprisingly in the Panhandle.

A new poll conducted for the St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Bay News 9 and Central Florida News 13 shows 41 percent of Florida voters support a ban on offshore drilling, while 49 percent oppose the idea. In May, 44 percent supported the ban and 44 percent opposed.

The telephone survey of 602 registered voters was done Aug. 6-10 by Ipsos Public Affairs, an independent, nonpartisan research company based in Washington, D.C. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Support has trailed off chiefly in the North Florida/Panhandle area, which has endured the effects of the oil disaster. In May, 52 percent of voters in the region, many of them Republican, supported a ban; now only 36 percent do. Continue reading here.

Peter Schorsch is the President of Extensive Enterprises and is the publisher of some of Florida’s most influential new media websites, including SaintPetersBlog.com, FloridaPolitics.com, ContextFlorida.com, and Sunburn, the morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics. SaintPetersBlog has for three years running been ranked by the Washington Post as the best state-based blog in Florida. In addition to his publishing efforts, Peter is a political consultant to several of the state’s largest governmental affairs and public relations firms. Peter lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Michelle, and their daughter, Ella.