Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Rasmussen on Support for Repeal

The Rasmussen poll, which tends to have a Republican-leaning "house effect," is now showing "support for repeal of [health care reform] has fallen below 50%" for the first time since enactment of the legislation on March 23, 2010 (via Daily Kos). Rasmussen has been using the following question wording:

A proposal has been made to repeal the health care bill and stop it from going into effect. Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal to repeal the health care bill?

I've always thought the measure to be vague; for example, does "somewhat favor" mean that someone would like parts of the legislation to be repealed, but not others? For what it's worth, though, here is a trend graph I made from percentages listed on Rasmussen's site and a little artistic flourish on my part (you may click on the graph to enlarge it):



There obviously have been fluctuations, and likely will into the future (indeed, support for repeal is back up in the first two May Rasmussen polls; follow Rasmussen's trends here). However, from mid-March to late April, there appears to have been a downward trend in support for repeal.

[Updated May 18, 2011.]

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