Christian Smith
The vast majority of voters are not satisfied with Trump’s apparent offer of a quid pro quo to oil companies, a poll by an advocacy group has revealed.
Nearly 6 in 10 likely voters surveyed — 58 percent — said they were “concerned” about a second Trump term after hearing about the former president’s alleged offer to undo broad swaths of President Biden’s climate policies. according to research by Data for Progress and Climate Power.
And nearly two-thirds — 61 percent — of likely voters told researchers they “reconsidered” their vote for a politician who made such an offer.
The discoveries follow reports earlier this month in The Washington Post that Trump demanded $1 billion from top oil executives at a Mar-a-Lago Club fundraiser — a sum he called a bargain that would allow him to pass a long list of industry priorities.
According to the Post, this included reversing the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas exports “on day one,” opening the Alaskan Arctic to drilling, auctioning off more concessions in the Gulf of Mexico, and dismantling the Biden administration’s plans to reduce pollution from car exhausts. .
A source later confirmed for The Hill that Trump asked oil industry executives for a billion dollars in campaign money.
The development came amid a larger flurry of reports about the close relationship between Trump and the oil industry. Earlier this month, Heatmap News reported that “allies of the big oil companies” donated $6.4 million to Trump’s legal defense in his secret trial in New York.
And Wednesday, the former president will appear in Houston at a fundraiser sponsored by Kelcy Warren, president of pipeline giant Energy Transfer Partners, and Harold Hamm of oil company Continental Resources.
“We’re going to bring our economy back, we’re going to drill small drills, we’re bringing down energy prices,” Trump said. told the Dallas-Fort Worth Fox affiliate in an interview Saturday at the National Rifle Association convention.
When painted in broad strokes, these relationships have made even a plurality of Republicans uncomfortable, Alex Witt of Climate Power told The Hill.
“Most voters would not vote — or are reconsidering voting — for someone who made a deal with oil and gas giants in exchange for campaign donations,” Witt said.
“And what’s really interesting about this is that it includes 42% of Republicans and a third of independents,” Witt added.
The poll numbers come with a huge asterisk: Many voters responded very differently when it was not just an anonymous politician, but Trump, who continues to be extremely popular among Republicans.
Although 42 percent of Republicans said they would reconsider voting for any politician who said what the former president allegedly did, their concerns dissipated when the remarks were attributed to Trump.
Upon obtaining this information, 42 percent of Republicans said that as a result they would be more likely to vote for the former president, and only 12 percent that they would be less likely to vote for him.
But with razor-thin margins in most presidential election polls and third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. emerging as a potential spoiler, any loss of support could be a problem for the Trump campaign.
This is especially true because discontent among independent voters in the new poll was even more dramatic: 47 percent said they would reconsider a vote for Trump specifically after discovering the reported comments at Mar-a-Lago.
The poll’s findings are fueling a new attempt by climate groups to eliminate independent voters in swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Climate Power launched a new bilingual billboard campaign on Monday in the seven states likely to decide the November elections.
“The idea was to find the people with the right message in the place where they think about it most,” Witt said, referring to major transportation routes where people would likely be sitting in their cars looking at billboards.
While it doesn’t mention Trump by name, the Climate Power ad shows a group of executives with money raining down on their heads.
“They profit,” says the text. “You pay.”
This campaign builds on recent Federal Trade Commission allegations that oil executive Scott Sheffield of Pioneer Resources collusion with OPEC to keep oil prices high, costing the average family $3,000.
According to journalist Matt Stoller, the Pioneer piece may have contributed to more than a quarter of total inflation in 2021.
“We are anticipating that we will see gas prices increasing [this summer] like we do most summers and… people fill up their cars when they drive through cities like Atlanta or Phoenix — they’ll know exactly why those prices are going up,” Climate Action’s Witt told The Hill.
The group’s new poll interviewed 1,231 likely voters between May 10 and May 13, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on its findings.
