Today brings two new national poll releases featuring in-depth questions on health care reform from CNN/ORC and Quinnipiac University. As always with the subject, the new releases provide many new wrinkles to consider, but for the moment I want to focus on just one.
The CNN/ORC poll begins with a very general measure: "From everything you have heard or read so far, do you favor or oppose Barack Obama's plan to reform health care?" They find a "slim majority" (51%) in favor, 45% opposed and 4% unsure.
Let's start with what is hopefully obvious: Democrats in Congress are drafting multiple proposals, and the Obama administration has not specifically endorsed any of these. So a well informed respondent ought to have trouble evaluating "Obama's plan," since Obama has not yet committed to a specific plan. Even more important, very few Americans are following that debate with rapt attention. Last month's CBS/New York Times poll, for example, found only 22% of Americans saying they have heard or read "a lot" about the health care reform proposals (50% said they heard or read "some," 23% not much, 5% nothing).
Notice that when the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked a general question about "Obama's health care plan" last month, they offered "no opinion" as an option: "From what you have heard about Barack Obama's health care plan, do you think his plan is a good idea or a bad idea? If you do not have an opinion either way, please just say so."With that option, slightly more than a third (35%) either had no opinion or were unsure. Those with an opinion divided evenly; 33% said it was a good idea, 32% a bad idea.
When pollsters push as hard as CNN/ORC for an answer, a lot of the responses are going to be very soft, often formed on the spot and based on very superficial impressions. Nonetheless, if I were charged with conducting a benchmark survey for a candidate over the next few months, and I had room for only one question about health care reform, I would be tempted to ask a very general question about "President Obama's plan to reform health care" (though I'd strongly lean to the NBC/WSJ version that explicitly prompts for "no opinion").
Yes, public opinion on health care reform is multi-faceted. Americans come to the debate with a rich set of values and attitudes about what they like and dislike about the health care system, what they would change and what they worry about changing. Most have not yet focused on the details of the legislative debate. Many never will. So questions about specific policy proposals can produce results all over the map. As Slate's Chris Beam puts in an excellent summary this week, "health care polling is especially variable, depending on the wording, the context, and the momentary angle of the sun."
But once a specific health care reform proposal comes up for a vote, members of Congress are going to be intensely interested in the bottom line perceived by their constituents: Do they generally favor or oppose the thing they are about to vote on? Right now, many Americans do not hold strong opinions about whatever they think "Barack Obama's health care plan" is or will be, but those attitudes are likely to deepen and change in the coming months.
In that regard, the comparison provided by CNN Polling Director Keating Holland is helpful:
"In September of 1993, when Bill Clinton was just starting to roll out his ill-fated health care plan, 54 percent said they supported Clinton's ideas on that issue. Today, 51 percent feel the same way about Obama's proposals," Holland said. "That indicates that Obama may have his work cut out for him in the coming months."
CNN also sent out a release this afternoon that includes the complete time series of this question from the 1993-1994 period. I used it to create the following chart:
Support and opposition is roughly comparable what the CNN/USA Today/Gallup polling partnership found in early 1993, although note that their first two surveys in September 1993 came just before and just after President Clinton delivered a live, prime-time address outlining the specifics of his proposal to a joint session of Congress. Note also that the average "unsure" percentage on the 1993 surveys was 9%, slightly more than double the 4% on the survey released today. CNN's surveys are now fielded by the Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) rather than Gallup, and ORC's interviewers may be pushing slightly harder for answers than Gallup's interviewers were 16 years ago.
Caveats aside, this is a measure worth watching, but be careful to keep it in context: Nearly a third of Americans, when offered the option, say they have no opinion (yet) of Barack Obama's "plans to reform health care."
Update: Nate Silver has more.