Poll: Obamacare Hasn’t Been This Unpopular Since Before Romney

The June Kaiser Health Tracking Poll indicates that Obamacare is now less popular than it has been at any time since October 2011 — about three months before Mitt Romney won his first Republican primary.  (Romney, of course, chose not to emphasize Obamacare during the presidential campaign.)  Kaiser’s polling now says that — by an 8-point margin — Americans hold an unfavorable (43 percent), rather than favorable (35 percent), view of Obamacare.  That’s the worst result for Obamacare in the past 17 surveys that Kaiser has conducted.

According to Kaiser’s latest polling, Americans think Obamacare will be bad for their themselves and bad for their country — and, in both respects, they say they’re more convinced than ever that that’s true. Moreover, it marks a 14-point swing against Obamacare since the first poll that Kaiser took after the overhaul’s passage in March of 2010.  At that time, Kaiser (almost alone among all polls) said that Obamacare’s net favorability rating was positive — at +6 points.  It now says that Obamacare’s net favorability rating is negative — at minus-8 points.

For example, when asked whether the country will be “better off” or “worse off” under Obamacare, Americans said Obamacare will make the country worse off, by a 9-point margin — 40 to 31 percent.  That marks a whopping 20-point swing against Obamacare since Kaiser’s polling during the month in which the overhaul was passed.  When asked whether Obamacare will make them and their families better off or worse off, Americans said Obamacare will make them worse off, by a 14-point margin — 33 to 19 percent.  That marks a 17-point swing against Obamacare since Kaiser’s polling during the month in which the overhaul was passed. 

Both of these tallies — on how Obamacare will affect the country and how it will affect given respondents and their families — mark the worst results that Obamacare has ever registered in Kaiser’s polling. 

It is important to note that Kaiser, a pro-Obamacare outfit, generally produces better results for the overhaul than one can find almost anywhere else.  This time, it weighted its polling so that the party distribution would be 30 percent Democratic and only 22 percent Republican.  That 8-point advantage surpasses the Democrat’s advantage in exit polling during any election in the Obama era — whether 2008, 2010, or 2012.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/poll-obamacare-hasn-t-been-unpopular-romney_736890.html