Support For ObamaCare At New Low, 43%

Like President Clinton needed this now.

The law’s never been popular, with support peaking at just 48 percent in November 2009. Today it’s slipped to 43 percent, numerically its lowest in ABC/Post polling. (It was about the same, 44 percent, a year ago.) Fifty-two percent are opposed, and that 9-point gap in favor of opposition is its largest on record since the latest debate over health care reform began in earnest in summer 2009.

More also continue to “strongly” oppose the law than to strongly support it, 37 percent to 22 percent.

This point is now well past its expiration date, but I wanted to note this for a while, so I'll do it now.

Liberals and the media (but I repeat myself) used to console themselves that many elements of ObamaCare polled well. Covering kids under 26? That has 58% support! No pre-existing condition exclusion? 62% support! The public option? 65% support! (I'm making up these numbers but, ballpark.)

So, they reasoned, the bill as a whole must be/should be popular, if only it were explained properly. They just ignored the polls showing a majority opposed to the bill in its entirety as due to an ill-informed public.

They trusted that when the public finally got the find out what was in the bill -- as Nancy Pelosi famously noted she couldn't wait to do herself -- they'd come on board.

But that sort of thinking was flawed from the start because the poll questions relied on by liberals were all benefits of the bill -- without mention of the necessary costs of the individual mandate, rationed health care, increased premiums, etc.

I could get similar poll results if I ask if people are in favor of personally owing a hooker's-lipstick-red Ferrari. I'd get 71% majorities in favor of that idea. Including 63% majorities in favor of owning a car that could do 0-to-60 in 5.2 seconds and 72% majorities in favor of owning a car that increases your odds of getting handjobs from strangers by 25%.

So -- ergo, 71% of the public must either own a Ferrari or be making immediate plans to purchase one, right?

No, of course not. None of my poll questions asked if the respondents were so enamored of those things that they'd be willing to pay $80,000 for the car. I asked only if people would like those things; I didn't bother asking if they would also like paying for those things.

If I asked about cost, I'd get numbers closer to the actual percentage of the public owning a Ferarri. And that's the only sensible way to ask the question. Simply asking people if they want a hot red Italian sportscar is utterly pointless. The only measure that matters is how many people want to trade one thing (a pile of money) for that other thing.

This is exactly what the liberals and media did, both attempting to sway public opinion via the bandwagon effect, and also deceiving themselves that an unpopular bill was really popular in its particulars.

They asked if people were generally in favor of 8-cylinder hot rods. They found, to no one's great surprise, that as a general matter, sure, the public was in favor of such things. They didn't bother to ask if they were willing to pay the costs involved before imposing those costs, by fiat, on the entire country.

Whoops, Meant To Say... One poll question did in fact ask about costs -- namely, the big question on ObamaCare as a whole, the one that implicitly asked about both the gimmes of ObamaCare as well as the take-ies. The public kept expressing its disapproval of ObamaCare when costs were included, every time it was questioned about it, and the liberals/media enablers kept ignoring them, or accusing them of being stupid, racist, or ill-informed.

posted by Ace at 05:21 PM

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