Health Care Polls: November 2011

Monday, November 14, 2011

Poll on Individual Mandate

Via Talking Points Memo, a new CNN/ORC poll (November 11-13) shows 52% of Americans supporting the individual-mandate component of the 2010 health-care-reform law. The requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance (with subsidies for some) has been one of the least -- if not the least -- popular elements of the reform law. The wording of the survey item (from Polling Report) is as follows:

"As you may know, the health care bill passed in 2010 includes a provision that will require all Americans who do not have health insurance to get it. Do you favor or oppose that provision?"

That seems to me like pretty clear wording. In June (apparently the last time CNN/ORC polled on this issue), 44% favored the individual mandate (the June wording, which is also shown on Polling Report, is very similar to that used in the recent survey). There really may be some shifting taking place in public opinion or this could be a one-time "blip." Future polls will help indicate which.

R2K Polling Controversy

On June 29, 2010, the website Daily Kos announced that polls it had commissioned from the firm Research 2000 were "likely bunk." Kos has asked readers to disregard all R2K polls done for his site. Any Kos/R2K polls cited here on the Health Care Polls blog over the past several months should accordingly be disregarded, as well. I am leaving them up, however, as part of the historical record. Often, my analyses of polling trends that included R2K surveys also included polls from other firms, too. I hope the pending lawsuits between Kos and R2K will reveal whether the latter's polls are completely valid, completely made-up, or perhaps, as Nate Silver suggested, the product of data being merely "mangled."