Public opinion static on health care

I thought it was interesting that our North Carolina poll this week found numbers on health care almost identical- 53% opposed and 38% in support- to what they were when we started asking two months ago- 50% opposed and 39% in support.

It made me wonder if the same thing was true nationally and generally speaking the answer is yes.

I went through the chart at pollster.com and picked out every national poll that asked a health care question in the last three weeks and had also asked one sometime between the middle of July and the middle of August. For organizations that had multiple polls in that period I used the one conducted the closest to two months ago today. Here's the verdict:

Company	Late July/Early August	Most Recent	Change
Rasmussen	42/53	46/50	+7
Fox	34/49	33/53	-5
Pew	38/44	34/47	-7
NBC/WSJ	36/42	39/41	+4
Average	37.5/47	38/47.75	-.25

So the average change in the spread across those four polls is a half point increase in support and a three quarters point increase in opposition for an overall shift of a measly quarter point. It looks to me like for the most part folks made up their minds on this over the summer and they're not going to change them. Of course if a new poll comes out that is particularly friendly or unfriendly to the President's agenda partisans will trumpet it but when you look at it on the whole there is basically no movement. Pretty remarkable considering the endless discussion and huge gobs of money being spent to try to shift public opinion on the issue.

It's too bad everyone involved in the fight on both sides couldn't have just known ahead of time that none of this was going to make a difference and spent all that cash on health care for people who can't afford it! Of course that's just not how the world works.