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. Respondents were asked to rate the threat level on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating no threat and 5 indicating an imminent threat. The poll revealed that 34 percent of Republicans viewed Obama as a significant threat, ranking him higher than 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 polarized nature of American politics contributes to these results. Glassner stated that demonizing the current office holder is common, and he predicted that fear mongering by both Republican and Democratic parties would be prevalent in the 2016 presidential campaign. He stated that the TV media and American politics heavily rely on instilling fear. The Ipsos survey, conducted from March 16 to March 24, surveyed 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans. According to the survey, 27% of Republicans viewed the Democratic Party as a significant threat to the United States, while 22% of Democrats saw Republicans in the same light. The participants in the survey expressed the most concern about potential terror attacks, with 58% considering Islamic State militants as an imminent threat and 43% viewing al Qaeda in the same way. In a recent survey, 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 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 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).