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"I was on the phone with a Republican staffer the other day, talking about the GOP\u2019s response to the passage of health care reform legislation. He said that his side was actually pleased, not because they like the bill, obviously, but because &amp;quot;the public will fight back in November. It\u2019s an enormously unpopular bill and the Democrats will suffer for having supported it.&amp;quot;\n\nBut, I replied, what about the most recent polling? The USA Today poll, that showed 48 percent of respondents think of the bill as &amp;quot;a good first step&amp;quot;? Or the ABC/Washington Post poll that showed a more voters -- (40 percent) -- say that their representative\u2019s vote on the legislation will make &amp;quot;no difference&amp;quot; in who they support in the fall than say it will be a positive or a negative? Or the CBS poll that showed a five point bump in favor of the bill after passage? Or the second ABC/WP poll that showed that Congressional Democrats and Nancy Pelosi got steady in their approval ratings among after it passed?\n\n&amp;quot;I, uh,&amp;quot; the staffer stammered, &amp;quot;I have not seen those polls. But trust me, the American public hates this bill.&amp;quot;\n\nTo judge by the overwhelmingly negative tone that\u2019s marked most of the mainstream coverage of health care reform, a lot of my colleagues have been doing just that: Often letting Republican assertions about its unpopularity go unchallenged (as here) and sometimes by simply asserting it themselves. As Politico typically put it: &amp;quot;the Democratic plan remains starkly unpopular in multiple surveys.&amp;quot; Don\u2019t let the links fool you: While the first poll indicates that the legislation is unpopular, it fails to prove it will have any effect on elections. And &amp;quot;multiple surveys&amp;quot; links to a post about one survey. From December.\n\nAnd news outlets aren\u2019t just cherry-picking polls to highlight this particular narrative, they\u2019re continuing to do astonishingly disingenuous polling themselves. Take that most recent ABC/WP survey, bannered on Sundays paper with the headline &amp;quot;Nation Deeply Divided on Health Care.&amp;quot; Now, that headline happens to be true, but it\u2019s not exactly news. &amp;quot;Strong&amp;quot; disapproval to Obama\u2019s health care proposals has been holding steady in the low 40s since last August\u2014when the Tea Party &amp;quot;movement&amp;quot; (a whole nine percent of voters!)\u2014started to pick up media steam. What\u2019s changed since then is the gradual syphoning off of the &amp;quot;somewhat disapproving&amp;quot; voters to &amp;quot;somewhat approving&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;somewhat approving&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;strongly approving.&amp;quot; Look at the trends:\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nYeah, that thick purple line of &amp;quot;Strong Disapprove&amp;quot; is meaningful, but constant. Look at our somewhats: Every time &amp;quot;Somewhat Disapprove&amp;quot; takes a hit, &amp;quot;Somewhat Approve&amp;quot; gets a bump. Likewise, every time fewer people &amp;quot;Strongly Approve,&amp;quot; more people &amp;quot;Somewhat Approve.&amp;quot; That is, until after the damn thing passed and suddenly all the &amp;quot;somewhats&amp;quot; go down and &amp;quot;Strongly Approve&amp;quot; goes hockey stick. Maybe junior hockey stick.\n\n So, yes, there\u2019s a strong divide: Between those that are &amp;quot;Strongly Against&amp;quot; the bill and everyone else, who seems to be pretty fluid on the matter. In other words, the midterms won\u2019t be easy for Congressional Democrats, but they\u2019ve got an audience willing to let them make their case\u2014if voters wind up caring about their health care vote at all (see &amp;quot;40 percent&amp;quot; above).\n\nPerhaps the most grievous crime in interpreting\u2014and doing\u2014health care polling, however, lies in taking respondents at their word when they say they approve or disapprove of this thing called &amp;quot;health care reform&amp;quot; at all.\n\nAs the sainted Nate Silver has argued over and over, health care policy is difficult to poll because few people\u2014even those enacting it\u2014can agree on what the precise terms are for each specific policy. This lack of definition severely undermined the debate over the so-called &amp;quot;public option.&amp;quot; Progressive lawmakers introduced the &amp;quot;public options&amp;quot; as an alternative to the dread &amp;quot;government-run health care,&amp;quot; as both a policy AND a term, but reporters\u2019 unwillingness to define the term consistently (and constantly) allowed the GOP to imbue it with the exact same scary-scary connotations as &amp;quot;government-run health care.&amp;quot; Left un- or ambiguously-defined, the &amp;quot;public option&amp;quot; polled badly. But when pollsters accurately described the policy, and then asked respondents about it: Approval in the 56-62 percent range.\n\nThe same lack of precision, and an assumption that respondents can be counted on to understand the impact of legislation, marks current polling on the policy now being rolled out. In the WP\u2019s &amp;quot;deeply divided poll,&amp;quot; registered voters were asked:\n\n(Do you think these changes to the health care system will allow people who have coverage now to keep it without any changes if they want to); OR (do you think these changes to the health care system will require everyone to make changes, whether they want to or not)?\n\nTo ask such a question so soon after passage of the bill is a little like the polls that asked voters, a few days after the invasion, how long the Iraq war would last. (On that topic, March 20 didn\u2019t get much coverage this year, huh?) It\u2019s LIKE that polling in that it\u2019s asking the general public to predict the real-world consequences of a massively complicated government endeavor. It\u2019s unlike polling of the war in that the question of whether the new health care legislation &amp;quot;requires everyone&amp;quot; to make changes to their coverage has something that resembles specific, objective answer. You could make an argument that the HRC bill will, in the end, influence the health care decision of &amp;quot;everyone,&amp;quot; but when it comes to the written law, it doesn\u2019t &amp;quot;require&amp;quot; anything &amp;quot;people who have coverage now.&amp;quot; That 60 percent of respondents believe it does might be propping up that steady 43 percent who &amp;quot;strongly disapprove&amp;quot; of it.\n\nBy the way, in March 2003, 80 percent of those polled thought the Iraq war would last less than six months. I don\u2019t want the lesson here to be &amp;quot;never ask the American public anything,&amp;quot; because I do believe in democracy. And I don\u2019t want to say, &amp;quot;don\u2019t trust their answers,&amp;quot; because I believe Americans are fundamentally pretty commonsensical people. I do think that, maybe, the lesson here is that they shouldn\u2019t believe what we, the media, tell them."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/for-gop-hcr-is-the-one-that-got-away>