CNN poll shows 56% still oppose ObamaCare

CNN released a small portion of its latest poll yesterday — oddly, almost two weeks after taking the survey — that shows that ObamaCare is just as popular as ever.  In a survey of over 1,000 adults (rather than registered or likely voters), the health-care overhaul legislation still trails its opposition by 13 points:

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According to the survey, 56 percent of the public disapprove of the passage of the bill, with 43 percent approving of the new law.

“Opposition is highest among men, older Americans, and people who make more than $50,000 a year,” says Holland.

But Americans are more evenly divided over whether the health care bill will be good or bad for the country. Fifty-one percent of people questioned in the survey say the bill will hurt the U.S., with 46 percent saying it will help.

“That indicates that Republican candidates may want to make the midterm elections into a retrospective referendum on whether the bill should have passed, while Democratic candidates may prefer to focus on the future and what the health care bill might mean for the country in the long run,” adds Holland.

Technically, neither side should make strategic decisions about this poll because of the nature of the sample.  A poll of adults is the least predictive sample for elections.  Polling likely voters gives politicians a much more predictive look at voting behavior than registered voters, and a general adult population sample is relatively worthless when other pollsters provide the more predictive sampling techniques.  In fact, general-population polls tend to skew too far toward liberal policies and politicians — so this isn’t good news at all for Obama and his health-care plan supporters.

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But a better question is why CNN chose to hold off the release of this question for almost two weeks.  A week ago, the news network released data on the immigration law from the same survey.  The older the data, the less relevant it is.  CNN appears to have wanted to pair it with results that showed support for the Obama administration — in this case, on financial regulation reform.  It doesn’t report the ObamaCare findings until the eighth paragraph of its release.

CNN still hasn’t released the entire survey, showing the sampling demographics and especially the partisan split in the sample.  After almost two weeks, one has to wonder why.

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