Gallup and USA Today released a shock poll today, showing a near-majority of Americans support government-run health care legislation just signed into law. What USA Today didn’t mention in its reporting, however, are the major caveats and actual details of the poll. Instead it just printed this headline:
Opinions turn favorable on health care plan
And then the story goes on the phrase the results as evidence that Americans simply love ObamaCare. But you need to turn to Gallup’s website for the real story:
Although much of the public debate over healthcare reform has been heated, barely a third of rank-and-file citizens express either enthusiasm (15%) or anger (19%) about the bill’s passage. However, only Democrats show greater enthusiasm than anger. Independents are twice as likely to be angry as enthusiastic, and Republicans 10 times as likely.
Independents and Republicans are several times more likely to be pissed than happy. And then there’s this:
While it also pleases most of his Democratic base nationwide, it is met with greater ambivalence among independents and with considerable antipathy among Republicans
The higher approval comes as a result of Democrats coming home to rally around the Messiah. In fact, Independents are evenly split on approval/disapproval and twice as likely to be pissed than happy.
This poll was shocking not only because all evidence has been to the contrary of its results, but because CNN released a poll just yesterday showing 59% of Americans opposing the legislation.
So not only should you look upon the Gallup/USA Today poll with skepticism, but even the results in this poll aren’t as hopeful for Democrats as the media are making it seem.
