Opinion Polls and Health Care Reform

Many times in political debates, people will use opinion polls as an argument for their position. One can argue for health care reform by pointing to the most recent Time poll, which says 46% of Americans think we need health care reform. Or one can argue against it by citing the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, which says 46% of Americans oppose the way Obama is handling health care reform. The point is, are public opinion polls even valid at all when it comes to complicated issues like health care reform?

Former Senior Editor of the Gallup Poll David W. Moore is very skeptical of polling. Last year he published a book called The Opinion Makers, where he talked about how polling can be affected by various factors such as how well informed the individual taking the poll is, or how the pollster phrases the question.

He recently wrote an article about the topic of health care reform polling, which is best summed up with these two paragraphs:

"The question on approval of Obama's handling of health care is a classic case of how polls sometimes mislead more than they enlighten. The public's response to the question is not based solely on the president's behavior, but on the general issue.

The truth is that probably about a third to a half of all Americans have little to no idea of what exactly Obama is proposing, nor how engaged he is in getting the legislation passed. But most can hardly be unaware of the controversy surrounding the issue. Typically, polls show that the more coverage an issue receives in the news media, the lower the approval rating for anyone associated with it. That's because people generally react negatively to press coverage of issues when the major focus of that coverage is on how much legislators disagree."

Incidentally, according to the most recent Gallup poll, 48% of Americans believe they have a good understanding of the issues in the current health care debate, but only 27% believe the members of Congress do.