CNN does its best to promote the America-is-evenly-divided meme that sells copy with its "CNN Poll: Americans split on health care reform" title, but a more accurate and newsworthy title would have been:
Strong majority of Americans support progressive health care reform
The CNN poll breaks down like this on the House HCR bill:
- (IF OPPOSE:) Do you oppose that bill because you think its approach toward health care is too
liberal, or because you think its approach toward health care is not liberal enough?
Nov. 13-15 2009 Favor (from Q.11) 46% Oppose, too liberal 34% Oppose, not liberal enough 10% Oppose, other reasons 3% No opinion 8%
In otherwords, 56% of Americans either support the House bill and its public option OR WANT MORE! Only 1/3 of Americans - in other words, a clear minority -- oppose the bill for being too liberal. Even if we give the conservatives the "other reasons" respondents, they still don't hit 40% in their opposition.
Of course, CNN is a bit squirley on how it described this critical part of its poll:
The survey suggests that 46 percent of Americans favor the bill, which passed in the House on November 7 by a 220 to 215 margin, with 49 percent of the public opposed to the legislation.
"Roughly one in three Americans opposes the House bill because it is too liberal, but one in 10 oppose the bill because it is not liberal enough," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "That may indicate that a majority opposes the details in the bill, but also that a majority may approve of the overall approach taken by House Democrats and President Obama."
Do you see the "56%" number in there anywhere?
Instead, CNN leads with the top line numbers that suggest that Americans don't support Democratic reform efforts, and then throws in the 1/3 too liberal verses 1/10 not liberal enough comparison -- making it sound like the conservative viewpoint outnumbers the liberal viewpoint.
Regardless, the real story here is clear (and should've been clear to the writers): The public option in the House bill or a stronger version has a strong majority of support, while conservative opponents are in a deep minority position.
