ObamaCare Remains Unpopular, or Round Two of My Exchange with Maggie Mahar
Maggie Mahar responds to my response to her critique of Michael Tanner’s claim that ObamaCare is deeply unpopular. Mahar’s alternative narrative, espoused by many on the Left, is that “the more voters learn more about the reform legislation, the more they seem to like it.”
Mahar shows that her narrative works if you begin looking for a trend at the high-water mark of opposition, if you look at a few select polls, if you look at not-so-straightforward poll questions, if you interpret simultaneous declines in both support and opposition as growing support, and if you devise a rationale for ignoring the views of those who most oppose ObamaCare. Which is to say, her narrative doesn’t work. ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular.
Mahar claims that support for repealing ObamaCare has been trending downward since reaching its high water mark of 63 percent on May 22, as measured by the polling firm Rasmussen Reports. This was shrewd; if you’re going to look for a downward trend, the high water mark is an excellent place to start. But it doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what’s been happening with public support for repeal. Starting on the enactment date, as I wrote before, “Rasmussen finds opposition to repeal hovering between 32-42 percent, and support for repeal hovering between 52-63 percent, with no clear trend on either side.” No clear trend, and a majority consistently supports repeal. Check out Rasmussen’s data and see for yourself.
Next, Mahar selects a few polls that do support her narrative (e.g., Gallup, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Kaiser Family Foundation). For example, in her first post, Mahar cites an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from June that suggests voters would prefer a Democratic congressional candidate who didn’t want to repeal ObamaCare over a Republican who did. Aside from the results being barely statistically significant, the question she cites introduces confounding factors such as party affiliation. When that same poll asked a more straightforward question, it found that 47 percent of respondents would be enthusiastic about or comfortable with a candidate’s desire to repeal ObamaCare, compared to 40 percent who would have reservations or be uncomfortable.
Moreover, selecting just a few polls probably paints a less accurate picture than looking at something like Pollster.com, which aggregates all polls and therefore (presumably) cancels out the quirkiness of individual polls.
Gallup’s Conservatives and Libertarians
In today’s Washington Post, William Kristol exults:
The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public’s conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.
Gallup often asks people how they describe themselves. But sometimes they classify people according to the values they express. And when they do that, they find a healthy percentage of libertarians, as well as an unfortunate number of big-government “populists.”
For more than a dozen years now, the Gallup Poll has been using two questions to categorize respondents by ideology:
- Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?
- Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?
Combining the responses to those two questions, Gallup found the ideological breakdown of the public shown below. With these two broad questions, Gallup consistently finds about 20 percent of respondents to be libertarian.
The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.
And note here: If you tell people that “libertarian” means “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” 44 percent will accept the label.
‘Reefer Sanity’
Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:
Arguments for and against decriminalization of some or all drugs are familiar by now. Distilled to the basics, the drug war has empowered criminals while criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens and wasted billions that could have been better spent on education and rehabilitation.
By ever-greater numbers, Americans support decriminalizing at least marijuana, which millions admit to having used, including a couple of presidents and a Supreme Court justice. A recent Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor legalization for any purpose, not just medical, up from 31 percent in 2000.
Read the whole thing. For more Cato work, go here.
Gallup Poll: Federal Reserve Makes the IRS Look Good
A recent Gallup Poll surveyed the public’s impression of how various federal agencies were doing their job. Of the agencies evaluated, on the bottom was the Federal Reserve Board. Only 30 percent of the respondents rated the Fed’s performance as either excellent or good. I can understand now why Chairman Bernanke felt the need to take his act on the road. Even the IRS managed to get 40 percent of respondents to see its job performance as excellent or good. A majority of the public, 57 percent, sees the Fed’s current performance as either poor or fair.
The result is not just driven by a general public disdain for federal agencies; over a majority of respondents thought such agencies as the Center for Disease Control, NASA and the FBI were doing an excellent or good job.
Nor is the result driven by public ignorance or indifference to the Fed; only a few years ago, back in 2003, 53 percent of Americans said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and only 5% called its job performance poor. But then, the Fed was also giving us negative real interest rates at that time as well. Perhaps there’s a good reason to insulate the Fed from short-term public and political pressures. Let’s hope Chairman Bernanke does not read these results as an excuse for repeating the Fed’s 2003 monetary policies.
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