The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama is taking a hit in the polls because of health care.
You could use our most recent national poll to make that argument. 90% of McCain voters are opposed to Obama's health care plan while only 81% of his voters are in support of it.
Let's dig a little deeper though. Is Obama losing the overall support of his 2008 voters that he hasn't sold yet on health care? The answer, for the most part, is no. That group still approves of him by a margin of 64/27.
Only 2% of voters nationwide overall voted for Obama but now disapprove of him on health care and disapprove of his overall performance.
Now let's look at another group- people who voted for McCain but support what Obama's trying to do on the issue. They account for 3% of voters nationwide, and within that group 90% of them approve of Obama's overall performance.
The number of Obama voters who've abandoned him because of health care and the number of McCain voters who've joined him because of health care appears to be basically equivalent. And that's why his approval rating is pretty much identical to the share of the vote he won last November.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI think you are overlooking the "context" element of the analysis.
Obama's approval should be higher than the percentage of the vote that he won on November 4th at this time through his presidency. That's been the case for every President except for Ford since WWII. Barack Obama has effectively joined Ford as the only President since WWII to see his approval rating lower than his win percentage at this stage through his presidency. People have a tendency to give the President a chance but the fact that they aren't giving it to Obama is pretty damning.
You were pretty much the only pollster to find that Obama didn't start off as very popular. But even putting that aside, Obama should be very popular at this time and he's not.
OUR GOVERNMENT HAS THE MONEY ALREADY TO PAY FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE.
ReplyDeleteIn his radio address, President Obama said that innovation is needed to get us out of the mess we are in and I came up with with this idea:
Most office space is very expensive yet it sits unused 70% of the time because most white collar work is scheduled for only one shift per day or only 45 hours out of a 168 hour week. 39% efficiency is completely unacceptable in today's economic and ecological environment. If white collar work was scheduled for 2 different hour shifts each day instead of one, we could cut the overhead of $50,000/worker in half saving the Federal Government up to $100 billion per year.
This simple plan will help our government and private industry in the following ways:
•Save federal gov a trillion dollars in next 10 years
.Exactly amount needed for universal healthcare
•Reduce white-collar overhead costs by 50%
•Reduce carbon footprint of office space by 50%
•Reduce budget deficits for most state governments
•Reduce our dependence on foreign oil
•Make workers competitive in the global economy
•Improve profits for all businesses and
•Increase tax receipts for state/fed governments
•Businesses can hire more employees & lower prices
for details or comments:
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenspaceguy
www.whitecollargreenspaceblogspot.com
whitecollargreenspaceguy@hotmail.com