A recent online poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos asked 2,809 Americans to assess the level of threat posed by various countries, organizations, and individuals to the United States. The poll revealed that 34 percent of Republicans considered Obama to be an imminent threat, surpassing Putin (25 percent) and Assad (23 percent). Western governments have accused Assad of using chlorine gas and barrel bombs on his own people. Sociologist Barry Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things," noted that the results are not surprising given the intense political polarization in the United States. Glassner suggested that demonizing the current officeholder is common in American politics, and he predicted that fear-mongering by both the Republican and Democratic parties would be prominent in the upcoming 2016 presidential campaign. "The television industry in this country, along with American politics, heavily rely on instilling fear," he commented. A study conducted by Ipsos from March 16 to March 24 surveyed 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans. According to the results, 27% of Republicans viewed the Democratic Party as a looming danger to the nation, while 22% of Democrats considered Republicans to be a pressing threat. The participants in the survey expressed the most concern about potential terror threats. Specifically, 58% of respondents saw Islamic State militants as an immediate threat, followed by 43% who viewed al Qaeda in the same light. The survey showed that 34 percent of respondents viewed North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un as a threat, while 27 percent viewed Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a threat. Cyber attacks were seen as an imminent threat by 39 percent of respondents, and drug trafficking was viewed as a threat by a third of the participants. Democrats were more concerned about climate change, with 33 percent rating global warming as an imminent threat, compared to 27 percent of Republicans who did not see climate change as a threat at all. The data was weighted to represent the US population and has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for all adults (3.4 points for Democrats and 3.4 points for Republicans).