"NO CREDIBLE POLLS"???

(h/t Steve Benen)

On his radio show, Sean Hannity has repeated several times that there are "no credible polls" that show a majority of Americans support a public health insurance option. I knew this was a crock but I never bothered to get all the reputable polls that show Hannity is wrong again. Fortunately, Timothy Noah at Slate has done the leg work:

Here is the wording of the Washington Post/ABC News poll, which tracked support for the public option from August through October at majorities of 52, 55, and 57 percent:

"Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a September Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which tracked support for the public option from July through September at majorities of 59 percent, 59 percent, and 57 percent:

"Do you favor … [c]reating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a September New York Times poll, which tracked support for the public option from July through September at majorities of 66 percent, 60 percent, and 65 percent:

"Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan—something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get—that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

Here is the wording of a newly released CNN poll, which tracked support for the public option in August and October at majorities of 55 percent and 61 percent:

"Would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies?"

None of these four questions include the words choice or competition, abstract nouns that arguably might color the response. All four contain the verb compete merely to describe objectively what the public option would do.

The Journal's beef, I would guess, is with one of its own polls. (As a onetime Journal reporter, I can attest that long-standing practice forbids parties on either side of the news/editorial divide to go public with mutual criticism. Polling is the province of the news side.) In June the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked the following poorly worded question:

"In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance—extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?"

The question is faulty partly because it characterizes the plan using the potentially loaded term choice but mainly because it doesn't allow the person taking the poll to oppose the public option while acknowledging that it's an important issue. Indeed, the more passionately you oppose the public option, the more important you may rate the issue.

In July and August the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll rephrased the question as follows:

"Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?"

Better.

The first, poorly worded version of the question found that 76 percent thought a public plan was "extremely" or "quite" important. The second, better-worded version still found that a 46-percent plurality supported a public option. The third, using the same wording, found that a 47-percent plurality opposed it. I call that a split decision. Even though the Journal/NBC News poll didn't find a majority favoring the public option in July when it asked a better-worded version of the question, it still found that more people supported the public option than opposed it. Only in August, when right-wing loonies were disrupting town meetings on health reform, did support slip to a hardly catastrophic 43 percent.