Swing Districts Polling ‘No’ for Health Care Reform
by Elisabeth Meinecke
03/16/2010
A new poll conducted by Kellyanne Conway’s firm during the period March 8-10 shows a majority of voters in 35 swing congressional districts oppose the health care reform legislation that may be voted on this week by the House of Representatives.
Even the districts polled that voted for Obama in 2008 were against passing the current legislation: 61 percent of voters in those districts said not getting health care reform done this year is better than rushing health care through.
Heather Higgins of Independent Women’s Voice, who commissioned the poll, said they read news reports on districts and looked at lists of potential swing representatives, and of the money available to the IWV for the project, chose 15 districts whose representatives previously voted no on health care and 20 that had voted yea.
Those polled said their representative’s vote on health care will affect their decisions at the polls this November. Seventy percent said they would be more likely to vote against a candidate who voted for the health care legislation currently being considered by the House, since it includes special interest deals.
Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, Inc. which conducted the poll, said there are rewards for those politicians who vote against the health care bill: 60 percent say they will vote for a candidate who opposes current health care legislation and starts over.
And it turns out that the White House’s recent public relations push on the issue is backfiring in these districts. At least 73 percent of the 1,200 polled said they saw at least part of the health care summit among Obama and members of Congress, and 55 percent said what’s happened in the past few weeks has made them less supportive of the legislation.
In fact, 40 percent overall of those polled wanted Congress to start over on health care, and an additional twenty percent don’t want any work on health care legislation this year. An over two to one ratio found the health care issue was distracting from what they thought were more pressing issues, like the economy and jobs.
Conway said the results show voters’ referendum on Washington’s performance rather than health care reform.
“This is not a poll that says, gee, Americans don’t want health care reform,” Conway said. “It is one of many polls, though, that confirms that voters don’t want this health care reform.”
The poll also shows the majority of voters in these districts don’t want their money to be funding taxpayer abortions and that American can’t afford to pay for the health care legislation right now. Interestingly, 48 percent of those polled self-identified as conservatives, though overall party breakdown was 40 percent Republican, 32 percent Democrat, and 23 percent Independent.
The poll results compliment a nationwide Rasmussen poll released today which shows 53% of Americans overall are opposed to the health care plan.
The following congressional districts were included in the Independent Women’s Voice poll: AR-01, AR-04, AZ-08, CA-18, CO-03, CO-04, IL-14, IN-08, IN-09, KY-06, MI-07, NC-07, NC-11, ND-At Large, NJ-03, NM-02, NV-03, NY-24, NY-20, OH-01, OH-06, OH-15, OH-16, OH-18, PA-03, PA-04, PA-08, PA-10, TN-06, TX-17, VA-02, VA-05, VA-09, WA-03, WI-08. The poll also asked voters whether they would be more or less supportive of those candidates who changed their votes either from a nay to a yea, vice versa, or who remained opposed on health care.
Read the complete poll results here.
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Miss Meinecke was a member of Hillsdale College's Dow Journalism Program, sports editor and beat reporter for the campus newspaper, and also contributed to Life Times, the newsletter for Southern Indiana Right to Life. She interned at Comcast SportsNet in Washington, D.C. through the National Journalism Center before joining Human Events in August 2008. E-mail her at emeinecke@eaglepub.com. You can also request to follow her on Twitter.
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