But in exchange for later sunsets, people have to be OK with dark mornings. And that’s not a universally popular tradeoff. Americans actually experimented with permanent daylight saving time starting in January 1974, and it didn’t go well. As reported in The Washington Post, support for year-round daylight saving time fell from a majority in late 1973 to around 30 percent in February and March 1974. According to Louis Harris polling that March, people were much more likely to say the change was a bad idea (43 percent) than a good one (19 percent). Parents who found themselves sending their children to school on pitch-black, cold winter mornings were particularly upset.1 But anyone who wakes up on the early side — which many Americans do — might also dislike slogging through an extra hour of darkness as they begin their day.

Some sleep scientists have argued that permanent standard time is more in sync with our body’s natural rhythms. We might like an extra hour of light at the end of the day, their argument goes, but we need that extra hour of morning light. And regional differences play a role, too. It’s probably no coincidence that one of permanent daylight saving time’s biggest boosters is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, since states farther south aren’t running the risk of a 9 a.m. sunrise, even at the darkest times of year. But northern states, and states on the western edges of time zones, would face longer stretches of morning darkness.