The Obama administration transformed their campaign apparatus into a public opinion machine just after the 2012 presidential election, and now they are gearing up to use it to sway opinion of the deeply unpopular Obamacare health care bill, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Obama and the Democrats have been selling this bill since its passage, but a new Fox Poll found that a record number – 66% – are worried about Obamacare’s impact on their health care, and another record number for the Fox Poll – 58% – want all or some of the law repealed. Only 19% would leave the bill as-is, and just 17% would expand it further.
For full polling data chart on Obamacare, click here.
Prior attempts to push the massive overhaul on to the American public, who by majority never wanted the bill, have failed miserably. This latest attempt will include Hollywood figures, which is quite telling as to where the Democrats thinking stands at this point.
The use of Hollywood is a clear sign that they have largely abandoned all public opinion, save for younger millennial generation voters who have been abandoning Obama in droves amid scandal. Democrats have made the decision that Obama is a liability as it pertains to his signature law, but being issue-based rather than ideology-based can repair and salvage typical Democrat advantage with the voter bloc.
There remains a strong partisan divide on the issue. Most Republicans – 65% – favor repealing all or parts of the health care law, while most Democrats want to see the law expanded – 31 – or kept in place as-is – 30%.
A majority of independents – 62% – are in line with the Republicans as they have been from the beginning, favoring repeal of at least some of the law.
Nearly three times as many voters – 66% – say the health care law makes them feel more worried, as opposed to 23% who are reassured by the bill. The anxiety of the American people is rising – the number feeling worried is up 15% since July of 2012 – soon after the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts rewrote the law to find it constitutional last year.
Almost all Republicans (87%), a sizable majority of independents (71%), as well as a plurality of Democrats (46%) report that Obamacare makes them feel more worried than reassured.
Democrats at 42% are six times as likely as Republicans – 7% – to feel more reassured by the law.
What do the numbers look like respecting the push to convince the younger American voters? Not good. More than 60% in all age groups feel worried about their health care in the future, although the highest is among those ages 65 and over – 70% – no doubt due to the revelations how Obamacare raids Medicare to the tune of over 700 billion over the next decade.
Overall, the law’s future outlook appears dim, as 65% of voters think their health care costs will increase under the law, just 8% say their costs will go down.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,012 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 22 to June 24. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
