Polls Show That Many People Apparently Believe Health Care Reform Has Been Repealed

So, do you remember that time that the House passed a symbolic repeal of the Affordable Care Act, that didn't go anywhere, because Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader and Barack Obama is still the President of the United States? Good times, right? Now, if you are aware of that vote, riddle me this: Are you left with the impression that the Affordable Care Act was actually repealed? If you answered "No," congratulations -- you are apparently in the smarter four-fifths of Americans.

Here are the results of the latest tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Per KFF's Drew Altman:

How could a repeal "vote" in the House -- however dramatic but still, only symbolic -- be misunderstood as an actual repeal by so many Americans?

First, people are very busy just getting through the day and they don't have a lot of time to sort through news reports about the policymaking process. They see the word "repeal" in the local paper or hear it on TV and think the law has been repealed. Second, there may be some partisan wishful thinking going on; 30 percent of Republicans think the law has been repealed while only 12 percent of Democrats do. But overall, it is obvious that the knowledge of basic civics is pretty low. Maybe it's because "Schoolhouse Rock" is no longer airing on Saturday morning TV explaining how government works.

Here's a refresher. Let's recall that at one point in our nation's history, these were concepts that people expected small children to be able to grasp.

UPDATE: Here's more from Jonathan Bernstein, whose "Plain Blog About Politics" is a recommended add to your bookmarks/RSS.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [e-mail] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Comments

[Alienhairdo]

09:24 AM on 04/01/2011

The level of ignorance in this country is shocking.

[lcole3]

10:09 AM on 03/02/2011

Apparently there is still much confusion around this Health Care reform and I am not surprised! I don't think it will end any time soon! http://bit.ly/9m7upK

[UberdanSounds]

02:02 PM on 02/28/2011

Here's a little perspective for people.

http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/

[Michaelantonio Jones]

03:58 PM on 02/26/2011

This is truly sad. And the Republicans want to get rid of PBS and NPR because.....?

[dragonladywaltham]

02:46 PM on 02/26/2011

We REALLY need to improve education in this country. Where was this pole taken......Texas or Faux viewers?

[headly67]

01:16 PM on 02/26/2011

This is not surprising based on what right wingers watch. Just look how they distorted the latest decision to not defend the DOMA - complete lies and fabrication.

http://mediamatters.org/research/201102250041

[Aroon]

01:16 PM on 02/26/2011

The key word here is they "believe"!

[hempster]

01:29 PM on 02/26/2011

FandFvd. Key Word kinda guy. There's no argument in the world gonna sway a "true believer" There remains a "one" best chance to counterfeit the "true believer" Vote.

[headly67]

01:14 PM on 02/26/2011

I again believe most right wingers answer polls about anything involving Obama with a wink and a nod. They don't really believe he is a Muslim, the anti-Christ or born in Kenya but they will answer yes if asked out of spite and anger - nor do they truly believe that HC reform has been repealed. Some do for real but not nearly this many.

[hempster]

01:07 PM on 02/26/2011

The question asked is: "How could a repeal "vote" in the House--however dramatic but still, only symbolic--be misunderstood as an actual Repeal by so many Americans?" OK

1. Drama. What else! Make the unreal take on the appearance of "real".

2. Most people only read the headlines. The "headlines" of articles are the responsibilities of the editors. They simply aren't doing their jobs or perhaps they have nefarious motives.

3. Many people consume "news" from a single source or point of view. This crowd usually has already well formed bias or prejudice.

The language is corroded. Words are given meaning that have nothing to do with the actual meaning. A recent example of this is the "picket line" walk thing. Sam Stein and Ed Schultz both derided President Obama for breaking his word. They corrupted the language to meet their own sense of rightiousness. There were, are, and probably won't be picket lines. No body's going on strike. It's a public employees union and may even have a no strike clause.

I don't like the corruption of language from whatever wing of the political spectrum. It is mis leading and a form of manipulation. If something is wrong it is universally wrong.

[the964kid]

12:49 PM on 02/26/2011

That 52% is very close to Obama's margin of victory in 2008, which was 53%. I'm going to take this a step further and make an observation that many progressives are engaged in the last years political battles, staying informed about important issues to them.

On the other side, you have the baggers, who are, by definition, a group with no clear goal or even legitimate reason for being (for example: forming the 'taxed-enough-already' party right when their taxes are cut to their lowest levels in decades), and it's these misinformed voters combining with the uninformed voters that makes up the large amount of people who don't seem to understand how our Congress works. They've obviously not watched any news or gotten their news from fake-news sources like Fox, and believe that their votes cast for bagger-congressmen actually made a difference. These will be the same people voting for whatever republican wins the GOP nomination in 2012.

The irony is that the misinformation campaign the GOP ran in 2009-2010, has undermined their ability to actually continue to rally voters against healthcare, when so much of their base thinks they already won.

[hempster]

01:42 PM on 02/26/2011

FandFvd. Perhaps they may not be able to rally against something already "repealed". That's astute to conjure that up. However the only real way to be sure whatever agenda the republican party sets is defeated, is for a lot more of us to vote then they. That's the effort we must make.
Notice I said "a lot more of us..." As democrats we struggle mightily in the Western States and in the whimsical redistricting, caused by census, every ten years. And as you know it's not the popular vote that guarantees a president.

Vote. 2012's just around the corner.

[the964kid]

01:48 PM on 02/26/2011

I agree with you. 53% wins an election but only by a few points over the 45-47% of uninformed votes casts by those would be pawns of billion dollar corporations. We can't take anything for granted.

The engaged and informed do make up the majority, but only if we all show up and vote. Meanwhile, the 'Supreme' Court has given corporations the power to dump tons of money into our political process, and in 2012 we can expect a more massive misinformation campaign waged by republicans and their corporate backers.

[DrBulldog]

11:06 AM on 02/26/2011

So how is it that the press thinks the polling of the ignorant is newsworthy? Why don't we ask an octopus instead?

[caseyblab]

09:57 AM on 02/26/2011

This is the Palin/Beck Supporter Axis of Ignorance alive and well in America's political life.

[tehixe]

09:20 PM on 02/25/2011

My own personal theory is that a poll can get at least 20% wrong answers on any issue. I think there's an inherent bias to multiple choice questions. By presenting the wrong answer as a choice, people who know the right answer may still be tempted to pick it. I think if you ask an obvious question, some people will suspect that there's some kind of trick--since you're asking, it must not be obvious, and the answer they thought they knew is actually wrong. Therefore, suspecting a trick, they will pick the wrong answer.

Of course, it might just be that 20% of the country is dumb as a post. That theory makes sense when you consider that 50% supposedly have an IQ under 100.

[MJinCanada]

09:53 PM on 02/25/2011

I was going to post something similar, with a caveat that 50% would fall below the mean rather than the average. After all, if you put Sarah Palin in a room with Stephen Hawking, Hillary Clinton and Dave Freer, she would lower the average IQ, but there would still be 3 people in the room above that average.

Of course, it's not the size of the IQ that matters, but how you use it.

But here's what I think is a very relevant statistic -- in research on psychopaths, it was found that roughly 30% of any group would fall for the con man's charm and lies hook, line and sinker. Another 30% would smell a rat quickly. And the rest would just wait out events to make up their minds.

[tehixe]

02:23 AM on 02/26/2011

"Average" is a generic term that covers mean, median, and mode. The mean is a way to measure average, they are not two separate things.

[hempster]

12:21 PM on 02/26/2011

I was going to do the "Bell Curve" breakdown but it's had to draw here. Suffice it to say a minimum of 20% of our population is below 80 IQ points and that seems to coincide pretty much with the percentage of people who believe Obama is: muslim, not born in the US(they probably don't think Hawaii is a state); 911 and Saddam Hussein are one and the same and I'm sure there are others.

Well folks these are the citizens who will go to the polls in 2012, after all they aren't so stupid as to not vote. How about us???

[macchugsid]

09:57 PM on 02/25/2011

"That theory makes sense when you consider that 50% supposedly have an IQ under 100."

Now,that is just a crying shame!

[tehixe]

02:20 AM on 02/26/2011

Not really. IQ is designed so that 100 is always the average. Its sole purpose is to place everyone's intellect along a standard bell curve with IQ 100 being the median. Even if the population gets smarter and smarter over the years, 50% of them will still be in the bottom 50th percentile of IQ simply by definition.

[HRN-STL]

08:55 PM on 02/25/2011

This is yet another reason not to trust polls. Polling Americans and asking them what they think about a specific thing like say Unions or Egypt yields useless results if like 25% or more of people are completely oblivious. If 22% are so misinformed on a huge issue like healthcare - how many more are misinformed or out of the loop on a more minor issue?

[ProgressiveGatorFan]

08:37 PM on 02/25/2011

The killing of public education works wonders.