An online poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos this month asked 2,809 Americans to rate the level of threat posed by various countries, organizations, and individuals to the United States on a scale of 1 to 5. The results showed that 34 percent of Republicans viewed Obama as 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. Barry Glassner, a sociologist and author, noted that the high level of polarization in American politics makes these results not surprising. He mentioned that demonizing the current office holder is common, and predicted that fear mongering by both Republican and Democratic parties will be prevalent in the upcoming 2016 presidential campaign. He mentioned that the TV media and American politics heavily rely on instilling fear. An Ipsos survey conducted from March 16 to March 24 surveyed 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans. 27% of Republicans viewed the Democratic Party as a current threat to the US, while 22% of Democrats saw Republicans as a threat. The survey participants expressed the most concern about potential terror attacks, with 58% considering Islamic State militants an immediate threat and 43% viewing al Qaeda as a threat. The survey showed 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, and 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 seeing global warming as an imminent threat. Among Republicans, 27 percent did not see climate change as 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).