Poll: Americans Prefer Year-Long DST

Polled days before the annual ritual of ending Daylight Saving Time by changing their clocks, Americans say they would much rather have one time that lasts all year long, one that doesn’t require changing all clocks twice a year. The latest Economist/YouGov Poll finds that nearly four times as many Americans would end the practice of setting clocks ahead in the spring and back again in the fall.

This preference is a rare one that transcends politics: Democrats and Republicans agree. Older and younger adults agree, too, but the margin in favor of ending clock changing is much smaller among Americans under the age of 30 — who have experienced the yearly ritual fewer times than their elders — than it is among Americans 65 and older, 77% of whom want to avoid changing time.

While Americans would prefer one time for the whole year and not worry about keeping their clocks in order, if there is going to be only one time for the U.S, which one should it be?

Nearly twice as many Americans who prefer not changing their clocks would prefer that Daylight Saving time – not Standard Time – be the one that is kept.

Again, which time one picks isn’t a matter of politics. Instead, it appears age matters more. Adults under the age of 30 are closely divided on whether they want sunlight later into evening (which happens with Daylight Saving Time) or in the morning. Older adults have a clear preference for Daylight Saving Time. So do people from every region. 

At least some of Americans’ stated preference to eliminate changing times may stem from the inconvenience and abruptness of the transition between times, which they could feel more strongly when asked about it near clock-changing times. Many Americans say they dread the forthcoming transition from Daylight Saving Time. Asked about its end this Saturday, 34% of Americans say that they are not looking forward to it, 21% say they are looking forward to it, and 38% say they don’t really care.

According to LiveScience, Benjamin Franklin takes the honor (or the blame, depending on your view of the time changes) for coming up with the idea to reset clocks in the summer months as a way to conserve energy, according to David Prerau, author of "Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time" (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005). By moving clocks forward, people could take advantage of the extra evening daylight rather than wasting energy on lighting. At the time, Franklin was ambassador to Paris and so wrote a witty letter to the Journal of Paris in 1784, rejoicing over his "discovery" that the sun provides light as soon as it rises.

Even so, DST didn't officially begin until more than a century later. Germany established DST in May 1916 as a way to conserve fuel during World War I. The rest of Europe came onboard shortly thereafter. And in 1918, the United States adopted daylight saving time.

Though President Woodrow Wilson wanted to keep daylight saving time after WWI ended, the country was mostly rural at the time and farmers objected, partly because it would mean they lost an hour of morning light. (It's a myth that DST was instituted to help farmers.) And so daylight saving time was abolished until the next war brought it back into vogue. At the start of WWII, on Feb. 9, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt re-established daylight saving time year-round, calling it "War Time."

After the war, a free-for-all system in which U.S. states and towns were given the choice of whether or not to observe DST led to chaos. And in 1966, to tame such "Wild West" mayhem, Congress enacted the Uniform Time Act. That federal law meant that any state observing DST — and they didn't have to jump on the DST bandwagon — had to follow a uniform protocol throughout the state in which daylight saving time would begin on the first Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October.

Fewer than 40 percent of the world's countries observe daylight saving time, according to timeanddate.com. However, those that do are taking advantage of the natural daylight in the evenings.