Sorry if this has been already diaried, if it has let me know and I'll delete.
It seems we finally have polling that might settle one of the more persistent debates around here. Course I expect the almost inevitable counter diary.
So for a while now I have been told repeatedly that the mandate will cost us seats in November and if the democrats have any sense that we had better head this.
Now I have repeatedly asked for evidence of this and either gotten silence or a 'just trust me' response. Frankly I have always thought this line of attack to be worthless but then at the same time I personally was not aware of anyone testing it so there was little that could be done.
Not any longer, it seems FDL commissioned a poll on Democrat Vic Synder of Arkansas' 2nd Congressional District. Now to be blunt I am not going to link to FDL, I do not want to give them the traffic for personal reasons. I will link to Nate Silver's analysis of the poll and from there you can follow his link to the poll.
For those that do not want to play internet tag and want to save a lot of reading the results of poll are pretty simple. At best, the mandate possibly causes a drop of support that is within the margin of error. Synder's reelect numbers go from 39, 65 (that's gotta hurt) to 35, 68. And even then it is not clear cut, the numbers suggest that the bulk of the loss might come from the bill itself not the mandates. Thus it seems that the claim that mandates will cost us seats seems to have been dealt a grievous blow.
And for those wondering, let's be clear here folks this was the most conservative district to vote yes on Health Care, ie the person most likely to be a victim of any such 'mandate backlash'. And the numbers hardly change.
On top of that this does not even begin to cover though how slanted the polls was against Synder and the mandate in general. Truthfully I am not sure how much to add specifically on that and I am not eager to quote Nate. First because I think he does a better job then me and second I do not want to violate fair use.
I will say that the poll slants things by asking a series of loaded questions, asking if things are 'fair' or 'unfair' (which well when you are dealing with a tax what answer do you think you will get?). Most interesting to me is that the poll asks a question long by robocall standards which seems to make no sense as it just narrows your sample size.
I highly encourage people to read the article in its entirety even if you think you will disagree. Nate does a brilliant analysis and the core point, that no matter how fair or not you think the poll is the reelect numbers barely move, is striking and in my opinion irrefutable.