Alarms are being raised about a new three-state poll that shows overwhelming majorities supporting such things as legalized medical marijuana nationwide, approving a path to citizenship for illegal aliens who are working, pay taxes and have no criminal record, and establishing national gun registration.
The poll was conducted among voters in New York, New Jersey and Virginia. Two of those three states, acknowledged Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, who spearheaded the survey with colleagues at Roanoke College in Virginia and Rutgers-Eagleton in New Jersey, are “notoriously left of center.”
But that doesn’t explain the Virginia outcome, where 63 percent of the respondents also favored the national gun registry, though it was the smallest majority of all the states. Seventy-four percent of respondents in New Jersey support gun registration and 68 percent of the New Yorkers agreed, the poll said.
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Polling was done over a four-day period in late February, Levy said.
It’s not all bad news for conservatives, however. Majorities in all three states favor completion of the Keystone Pipeline project, with 63 percent in favor of the project in New York, 67 percent of Virginians backing the pipeline and 65 percent of Garden Staters approving. More Virginians support repeal of Obamacare, while a slim majority in New Jersey would scrap the legislation and a slim majority of New Yorkers would keep it.
Both the Washington Times and Washington Examiner are carrying reports about the gun registration aspect of the poll, as is the Seattle Gun Rights Examiner.
Majorities of the respondents in all three states have favorable opinions about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Conservatives Rand Paul and Paul Ryan were not nearly as popular with poll respondents. Fifty-six percent like Barack Obama in New York, only 45 percent have a favorable opinion of him in Virginia and in New Jersey the president scored 50 percent favorability.
Levy said there is no intention to suggest that this poll is representative of a national trend.
