Did You Know?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999

* Nearly nine in 10 American voters (88 percent) agree that car companies should be required to make sport-utility vehicles and minivans meet the same strict air-pollution standards as passenger cars (Celinda Lake survey for the American Lung Association).

* Fifty-six percent of the public believes that the news media are politically biased in their reporting. In 1985, the figure was 45 percent (Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center).

* Seventy-one percent of Americans favor renewing diplomatic ties with Cuba, a dramatic increase over 1996 polls showing only 40 percent favored such a move (Gallup Poll taken in early May).

* With the average age of puberty at 12 and of marriage at 26, and with 70 percent of 18-year-olds having had intercourse, at least 69 percent of Americans agree that teaching abstinence until marriage is "just not realistic" (A national poll by Hickman-Brown Research Inc. for Advocates for Youth and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States).