Advice from GOP Pollster David Hill

Republican pollster David Hill urges complete-repeal supporters to look beyond responses to dichotomous (yes/no) opinion-survey questions on jettisoning the 2010 health care reform law.

Talking Points Memo Urges Nuance

Talking Points Memo reviews recent polling on health care reform, finding that "the public’s opinion on health care reform is disparate, riddled with qualifications and subject to change when new information is introduced. And it turns out Americans don’t really hate it."

Poll on What Supreme Court Should Do in Upcoming Obamacare Case

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows greater opposition than support for the 2010 health care law, by a 52-41% margin. In addition to asking about overall support/opposition, the poll probed attitudes toward the individual-mandate aspect of the law, which is the central part of an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court hearing. One key question (as shown in this statistical report) asked the following:

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about the health care law later this month. Of these three options, which would you prefer to have the Supreme Court do: 1) (uphold the entire law), 2) throw out the part of the law that requires individuals to have coverage and keep the rest of the law, or 3) (throw out the entire law)?

The results showed 42% of respondents (and by extension, of U.S. adults as a whole) wanting the Court to throw out the entire law, 25% wanting the individual mandate to be voided but the rest of the law upheld, and 26% in favor of upholding the entire law.

Trends and Demographics on the ACA

The Pew Research Center is out with its latest public opinion survey on the health care reform law. Quoting from the accompanying news release:

Overall, 47% approve of the law, while 45% disapprove. The 47% approval represents an uptick in support since January 2011 (41% approve vs. 48% disapprove). Since the bill became law on March 23, 2010, disapproval of the legislation has been fairly steady, ranging from 44% in April 2010 to 48% in January 2011. Approval has shown somewhat more movement, from a low of 35% in July 2010, to a high of 47% in the current survey.

Pew also provides a table with many demographic comparisons. The reform law is most popular among Black and Hispanic respondents, 18-29 year-olds, holders of a bachelor's degree or higher, respondents with a family income of $30,000 or less, and Democrats. Slightly more political independents disapprove (47%) than approve (44%) of the law, with Republicans heavily in opposition.

HCR Attitudes in Presidential Swing States

A couple of days ago, USA Today had an article with the headline “Swing states poll: Health care law hurts Obama in 2012.” Indeed, the Gallup-conducted poll had a number of negative findings on voters' reactions to the 2010 health care reform law. By a 53%-38% margin, swing-state voters saw passage of the law as a "bad thing" rather than a "good thing" (the margin was a little closer, 50-42, nationally). Slightly more swing-state voters (15%) claimed the law has hurt, rather than helped (11%), them and their families. By an even larger gap (42-20), these respondents expected the law to do more harm than good in the long run.

Gallup also examined presidential "horse-race" numbers in the swing states, and it is these results that suggest possible oversampling of Republicans or other house effects in a GOP direction (as has happened previously with Gallup, here and here). Here are Gallup's recent swing-state horse-race numbers, compared with those of two other swing-state polls taken in the past few weeks (below the bar graphs are the states included in each respective poll, with grey indicating omitted states).

As can be seen, USA Today/Gallup is the only mid-February swing-state poll (at least that I'm aware of) showing President Obama trailing his possible GOP opponents. Rick Santorum leading Obama by 5 percentage points in the swing states (and by 3 nationally) is inconsistent with virtually any other poll.

The other two swing-state polls, by Fox News and Purple Strategies, show Obama leading the GOP contenders by varying margins.

Assuming that preference for Obama in the presidential election would be positively correlated with favorable attitudes toward health care reform, one can raise the following question: If Gallup's methodology has systematically depressed Obama's numbers in the swing states, has it also depressed support for the new health law?

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.

Dip in ACA Favorability

In the Kaiser Family Foundation monthly health care polls, the percentage of Americans expressing a favorable opinion toward the Affordable Care Act (the new law enacted in March 2010) has been in the low 40s nearly every month from August 2010 to September 2011. In the new October 2011 poll, however, favorability is down to 34%, compared with 51% who express an unfavorable attitude. We'll keep an eye on the Kaiser polls over the next few months to see if this month's drop in approval is a one-time blip or the start of a sustained trend.