If you're following the debate in Washington, DC over health care/insurance reform as closely as I am, you're probably interested in what the public opinion polling has to say. One thing that I find particularly frustrating is when a media report cites only one poll to make a claim about the public's support or opposition toward some issue or another, without contextualizing the matter (i.e., is the one poll consistent with others taken around the same time or is it possibly an outlier?). My aim, therefore, is to compile all the relevant polling in one place, just like Stuart Thiel's old "Professor Pollkatz" site used to do with George W. Bush's approval ratings.
There already are at least two poll-compilation sites where you can see what's going on related to health care, but each is limited in some way. Pollster.com presents beautiful graphics compiling poll results on a given topic, but thus far at least, it is covering only two questions related to health care: President Obama's handling of the issue, and general support for the Democrats' health care reform efforts (as led by Obama or congressional Democrats). Polling Report, on the other hand, provides a lot more raw information, but (a) it's not in graphical form, and (b) it doesn't group the data together by specific issues (e.g., support for universal coverage, a public option, an employer mandate, etc.). The relevant Pollster and Polling Report pages can be accessed via the links section to the right. I will aim, however, to create additional graphic depictions on the specific components of the larger health care debate.
The next few months will be "crunch time" for health care reform. If you want to see where the public stands on all the particulars of the debate, this is the place!
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