If you are on Facebook, you may have seen the following:
So, is this true? Well, technically "yes", provided you read the fine print at the bottom.
I'll talk about what is going on before the fold.
(cross posted at my personal blog)
Ok, it is a legitimate question to ask: "is opposing Obamacare politically risky"? So when you ask the question, it is legitimate to poll the Congressional districts that appear to be competitive.
So a Republican leaning poll did that:
On August 7-8, 2013, Basswood Research conducted a nationwide survey of likely general election voters in ten different Congressional districts. Six of those House districts are presently held by Republicans, four are held by Democrats. They broadly represent a cross-section of Republican-leaning but not safe-Republican districts. The Republican held seats are FL-2, IL-18, NJ-7, NC-2, OH-12, and OR-2. The Democratic held seats are GA-12, NC-7, UT-4, and WV-3. The survey was conducted by live professional interviewers by telephone. The sample had 100 interviews in each of the ten districts, yielding an overall sample size of 1000, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1%, at a 95% confidence interval for the overall sample.
Key Findings
Discontent with Obamacare is vast.
Only 20% of voters in these districts support going forward with Obamacare unchanged. Thirty-two percent express concerns about Obamacare, and a desire to slow down its implementation and make changes to the law, while a 45% plurality think the law should be repealed. Thus, 77% favor either a slow down in implementation or an outright repeal. Only 5% of Republicans and 17% of Independents favor proceeding with Obamacare fully and without changes. Even among Democrats, just 42% fully embrace Obamacare, with 36% agreeing that it should be slowed down, and 17% favoring repeal.
The idea of “de-funding” Obamacare is broadly supported.
When asked the straight question, “Do you support or oppose de-funding, or removing the funding, from the Obama health care law?” respondent voters supported de-funding 57%-34%. Among those with strong opinions on either side, those who “strongly support” de-funding outnumbered those who “strongly oppose” de-funding by a 41%-22% margin, signifying much greater intensity among opponents of the law. Among swing voting Independents, support for de-funding came in at 57%-34%, exactly mirroring the result in the overall sample.
Note: I used to live in IL-18; this district has gone Democratic once in the last 100 years and the seat is currently held by Aaron Schock; it is about as safe as a district can get. It is especially true now since redistricting when most of the Democrats who used to live in IL-18 were put in IL-17. So I wonder why they'd include IL-18 unless it was to pad their statistics.
Here are the districts that they used, along with the 2012 general election totals: Romney vs. Obama
CD |
R. vs. O. |
FL-2 |
52.3-46.5 |
IL-18 |
60.7-37.4 |
NJ-7 |
52.5-46.3 |
NC-2 |
57.3-41.7 |
OH-12 |
54.4-43.9 |
OR-2 |
56.8-40.5 |
GA-12 |
55.4-43.6 |
NC-7 |
59.2-39.9 |
UT-4 |
67.2-30.2 |
WV-3 |
65.0-32.8 |
AVG |
58.08-40.28 |
So, is the "57 percent in favor of defunding" really a surprise?
(statistics from here)
But never mind; I can see why they did this poll.
But what does the Heritage Foundation do?
Oh noes! Oh wait...read the fine print...very fine print. :-)
It doesn't come more cynical than that.