What Does Legitimate Polling Tell Us About The Battle Over Health Care Reform?

Buck & Mike have something in common-- both take a lot of money from the health care industry & both oppose reform

I used to be very curmudgeonly about polling, research and focus groups. In the music business they weren't worth squat. I became a believer after I met Celinda Lake and her team at Lake Research. I was backing a really excellent candidate who had never lost an election against a pitiful Blue Dog incumbent who had been recently gerrymandered into the district. To me it looked like a close race. Celinda polled it fast and said, "You're candidate is going to get swamped; she's going to finish with 24% of the vote." That was absolutely impossible. But it's exactly what happened-- 24% of the vote.

So when I got an invitation to be on a briefing call today with Celinda (and John Anzalone of Anzalone Liszt Research, another pollster with an excellent reputation) to discuss the state of health care reform polling, I jumped at the opportunity. Our side keeps saying the voters overwhelmingly want the public option. The other side says voters overwhelmingly don't want the public option. And the Beltway Villagers have a new meme they've been spreading that voters are so against meaningful health care reform that Democrats will lose large numbers of congressional seats in 2010.

The polling data shows exactly the opposite, The pollsters told us that the worst position for any member of Congress to be in-- regardless of political party (and this was in response to a question I asked about Blue Dogs in general and John Barrow in particular)-- was to be seen by voters as having taken significant amounts of money from the health care and insurance industries and then voting against meaningful reform. Every poll shows that voters understand that the public option is part of meaningful reform and they favor it.

Ø 60% of likely 2010 voters say they watched at least part of the President’s speech, and a majority of those who did (54%) are now more likely to support his plan

Ø By a 10-point margin, voters are more likely to re-elect a Member of Congress who votes for healthcare reform

Ø By a 62% to 28% margin, voters support a public option regardless of whether they watched the speech

And speaking of Blue Dogs, Research 2000 has a poll up on Daily Kos showing that, despite opposition from Arkansas' two corrupt senators and 4 corrupt congressmen, the voters want "a government-administered health insurance option that anyone can purchase to compete with private insurance plans." Two corporate Democrats, Blanche Lincoln in the Senate and Mike Ross in the House, have been key opponents of meaningful health care-- and two of the biggest recipients of thinly veiled bribes from Insurance and the Medical-Industrial Complex. They should probably take a look at these numbers and draw the right conclusions about balancing their constituents' interests and the special interests that have been paying them off. As Markos pointed out, "The Wal-Mart twins, Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, are as usual running scared on a key Democratic initiative. Perpetually afraid of their constituents, they have remained mushy on the public option, and present one of the key roadblocks to effective health care reform that puts people first, not the insurance companies. Problem is, they are out of sync with their constituents."

Below is a TV spot Americans United For Change is running to remind members of Congress who they're supposed to be representing. But first look at a very typical Republican member of Congress from just up the road apiece from where I live, Buck McKeon. He represents a humongous district (CA-25) stretching from Santa Clarita in northeast L.A. County out to the Mojave Desert, Palmdale, Victorville, Barstow and then up through Inyo and Mono counties almost as far north as Sacramento. Once considered the most Republican of districts, Obama won it last year and demographics should make it solidly blue within one or two cycles. McKeon was born during the Great Depression and couldn't be more out of touch with his constituents than if he had just arrived from Triton, the largest of Neptune's 13 moons. Of the 113,000 uninsured individuals in CA-25, one of California's poorest districts, 90,000 would gain access to high-quality, affordable health insurance if HR 3200 were to pass. If McKeon was working for the voters of his own district he would be working with Obama to pass the bill. Instead he is adamantly opposed and has signed on as a die-hard obstructionist. Never mind that 7,700 seniors in the district would avoid the donut hole in Medicare Part D, or that 1,200 families there could escape health care cost related bankruptcy each year or that local health care providers would receive payment for $24 million in uncompensated care each year or even that 14,400 small businesses he claims to be looking out for could receive tax credits to provide coverage to their employees; he's against it, against it, against it. And McKeon isn't a teabagger like Michele Bachmann or Joe Wilson-- just a garden variety anti-family Republican. This video could be about him in November, 2010: