Those opening up The Washington Post Monday morning were greeted with the headline “Public option gains support,” followed by data from a new ABC/Washington Post survey showing a slight bump in the number of respondents who favor a “public insurance option” to 57 percent, up from an August low of 52 percent.
To a reader skimming the day’s headlines, you’d think there’d been a major shift in the political environment that might assuage the justified concerns of Blue Dog Democrats and move Congress one step closer to the inclusion of a public option into the health care reform legislation.
New poll numbers can be as captivating to the media as a big silver UFO-shaped weather balloon, but it’s worth checking out the attic. If you follow the ABC/WaPo poll, you notice that the shift from last month is a measly 2-point jump from 55 percent support.
There’s also the question of what the public even knows about the “public option.” Mark Blumenthal, editor of Pollster.com, recently wrote about the trouble with polling about the “public option,” referencing a mid-1970s academic study where survey respondents were asked if they supported repealing the 1975 Public Affairs Act. Between 30 percent and 40 percent agreed or disagreed with the repeal, despite the fact that there is no such thing as the 1975 Public Affairs Act.
In our current example about the public option, large numbers of voters are giving their responses despite having little or no information. In a recent Pew study, only 56 percent even knew the “public option” dealt with the issue of health care.
Does this mean their opinions aren’t valid? No. But it does mean public opinion remains extremely malleable on the issue.
When only 56 percent of Americans know that the public option is about health care, it’s tough to really say that a tiny increase in the number of adults saying “support” represents real movement in the electorate.
The other issue with the current ABC/WaPo poll is in its other misleading storyline, that only 20 percent of the electorate now identifies as Republican. The partisan breakdown of the poll hands Democrats a 13-point advantage over Republicans, almost twice the size of the advantage they had among voters on Election Day in 2008.
It’s nothing new for media polls to overstate shifts in the partisan makeup of the electorate. In 2006, pollsters showed as much as an 11-point advantage in party identification for Democrats. On Election Day, exit polls showed the gap at only two.
Similarly, in 2008, an LA Times/Bloomberg poll showed a 17-point party identification advantage for Democrats. In the end, the gap was only seven.
In fact, the more interesting numbers in the poll released Monday are the ones that haven’t moved. More voters (48 percent) oppose the reforms to the health care system than support them (45 percent), the same level of support seen in the August poll.
President Obama’s handling of the issue of health care has remained the same (48 approve, 48 disapprove) as it was in September and still remains worse than it was in July (49 approve, 44 disapprove).
Numbers that don’t change rarely grab headlines, even if they provide the more important information. Despite each team going full-bore on their advocacy efforts, the public hasn’t moved much in terms of their overall impressions about the health care reform battle in Washington.
“Poll shows Americans feel largely the same as they did last month” isn’t a very compelling headline, sure. In this case, however, it’s certainly closer to the truth.
Kristen Soltis is director of policy research at the Winston Group.
