An online poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos this month asked 2,809 Americans to assess the level of threat posed by various countries, organizations, and individuals to the United States, using a scale of 1 to 5. Among Republicans, 34 percent viewed Obama as an imminent threat, surpassing Putin (25 percent) and Assad (23 percent). The poll results were not surprising given the intense political polarization in the United States, according to sociologist Barry Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things." Glassner noted that demonizing the current officeholder is common in American politics, and predicted that fear-mongering would be a prominent feature of the 2016 presidential campaign by both the Republican and Democratic parties. He stated that the television media and American politics heavily rely on instilling fear. The Ipsos survey, conducted from March 16 to March 24, involved 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans. According to the survey, 27% of Republicans viewed the Democratic Party as a pressing danger to the country, while 22% of Democrats considered Republicans to be an immediate threat. The respondents expressed the most concern about potential terror threats, with 58% seeing Islamic State militants as an imminent danger and 43% feeling the same about al Qaeda. A survey found that 34 percent of respondents viewed North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un as a threat, while 27 percent saw Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a threat. Cyber attacks were considered an imminent threat by 39 percent of respondents, while drug trafficking was seen as a significant threat by a third of those surveyed. Democrats were more concerned about climate change than Republicans, with 33 percent of Democrats viewing global warming as an imminent threat. Among Republicans, 27 percent believed that climate change was not a threat at all. The data was adjusted 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).