Internet Scofflaw

Chris Good, writing in the Atlantic, says public opinion is mixed on health care reform:

Not to beat a dead horse, the polling doesn’t say Americans oppose Democratic reforms. At best, we can say it’s a mixed picture. Of the most recent, reliable, non-partisan major polls–a Sept. 12 Washington Post/ABC survey, an Economist/YouGov survey released Sept. 15, and a Sept. 25 NY Times/CBS poll–only the first shows Americans opposed to Democratic plans (48 percent to 52 percent); the other two show Americans in favor, though NY Times/CBS found that 46 percent say they don’t know enough to decide.

Oh really? As Mickey Kaus points out, Good ignores the two most most recent Economist/YouGov polls, both of which have majorities opposed. So of the three polls that Good arbitrarily selects, two actually show the public opposed. The other is worthless, bizarrely obtaining 46% without an opinion.

But let’s not restrict ourselves to those three, particularly since the two best polling outfits today are Rasmussen and Pew. Pollster.com (again via Kaus) has a summary of recent polling on health care reform. Choosing the latest poll from each outfit and going back as far as July, we obtain the following results:

• Plurality opposed: Rasmussen (46-50), Fox (33-53), YouGov (49-51), PPP (45-46, a Democratic poll), NBC/WSJ (39-41), Pew (42-44), ABC/WPost (46-48), OnMessage (38-53, a GOP poll), AP-GfK (46-54), NSLC/Public Opinion Strategies (35-46, GOP), Ipsos/McClatchy (40-45), NPR (42-47)
• Plurality supporting: CBS/NYT (30-23, with 46% no opinion), Harris (49-41, an internet poll), Bloomberg (48-42, taken during the post-speech bounce), CNN (51-46, bounce).

So we have twelve polls that show the public opposed. On the supporting side, all we have are two polls from during the bounce (Ramussen had 51-46 support at the time), an internet poll, and the wierdo CBS/NYT poll. Here’s a chart:

Good notwithstanding, the polling clearly does say that the public opposes Democratic health care “reforms”.

(Via Instapundit.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under Media Failure, Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.