Has Opinion on Health Care Shifted?

For months leading up to the passage of health care, the pollster.com average found a net plurality of around 5-12 percentage points disapproved of the plan.  The first poll taken after passage, however, found the public in favor of the plan by a 49-40 margin.  Was that just an outlier, or has opinion actually shifted?

There have been five polls polls taken after passage of the bill.  Here's how they stack up:

	Favor	Oppose	Net
WaPo	46	50	-4
CBS	42	46	-4
Quinnipiac	40	49	-9
USA Today-Gallup	49	40	9
YouGov	50	50	0
average	45.4	47	-1.6

Across these five polls, a plurality still disapprove of health care -- but only a very slight one.  Let's compare them to the last five polls released before passage:

	Favor	Oppose	Net
Bloomberg	38	50	-12
CNN	39	59	-20
CBS	37	48	-11
Quinnipiac	36	54	-18
Rasmussen	41	54	-13
average	38.2	53	-14.8

The last five polls were among the most negative of the past year.  Whether this is due to the build-up before passage or simply the five that happened to be last, I can't quite say.  Comparing these 10, we see a 13 point swing in net approval of the health care bill.  But this might not be the right comparison groups.  Given the different questions and samples of the polls, it might be better to compare polls taken by the same organization before and after.  There have been three of these:

	After			Before
	Favor	Oppose	Net	Favor	Oppose	Net
CBS	42	46	-4	37	48	-11
Quinnipiac	40	49	-9	36	54	-18
YouGov	50	50	0	48	53	-5
average	44	48.33	-4.33	40.33	51.67	-11.33

Looking at only these three, we find a 7 point swing in net approval -- and we still see a small plurality (though not majority) opposed to the bill.

The trend could be just a blip, could be based on a few faulty polls, or could be a genuine shift in how Americans view the health care bill (or at least how they report they feel).  If the first two are true, new polls will pretty quickly bear this out.  But there are two fairly good reasons to believe that the last one is, in fact, happening:

1.) The initial results were misleading.  Take the these results from a Bloomberg poll taken right before the vote in which 38% favored the bill and 50% were opposed

Health care is so complicated it is hard for the average American to understand the proposals that are currently being discussed
75% Agree, 23% Disagree

The cost of doing nothing on health care will be greater than the cost of the proposed plan to overhaul it
51% Agree, 40% Disagree

The health care system is fine the way it is
20% Agree, 79% Disagree

In short, people don't know much about the health care bill but they want to do something to fix the broken health care system.

2.) As 538 points out, a small but meaningful number of people opposed the bill b/c it wasn't liberal enough.  The approval numbers among Independents and Republicans in the new USA Today/Gallup poll is roughly similar to other previous polls, but the approval numbers among Democrats are much higher.

In the last poll before the bill passed (and outlier in terms of negativity toward the bill), conducted by CNN, 59% reported that they were opposed to the bill -- but 13% reported opposing the bill b/c it wasn't liberal enough.  In other words, 52% of the population either favored the bill or thought it wasn't liberal enough while 43% opposed the bill b/c it was too liberal.