Return of the Insta-Poll!
I haven't thought about dial polls since debate season, lo those many months back. CNN, however, hasn't forgotten their tremendous success with the little gimmicks, and had one going during Obama's speech. The readout was encouraging for the White House:
Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans — a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama's address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.
Sixty-seven percent of people questioned in the survey say the support Obama's health care reform proposals that the president outlined in his address, with 29 percent opposed.
Somewhat less encouragingly, "those figures are almost identical to a poll conducted immediately after Bill Clinton's health care speech before Congress in September, 1993."
By
Ezra Klein
|
September 10, 2009; 11:00 AM ET
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Posted by: obrier2 | September 10, 2009 11:07 AM | Report abuse
Clinton's speech isn't an apt comparison. The landscape is wildly different now.
Posted by: eRobin1 | September 10, 2009 11:14 AM | Report abuse
I'm surprised at the difference between the during-speech response and the morning-after response: so far today, I've heard a mix of apathy, calls for increased cost control, and renewed calls for a Canadian/Vermont-like system. Of the three, the third may yet be the most troubling: time wasted on what is for most a dead option is time not spent moving forward on something possible.
Posted by: rmgregory | September 10, 2009 11:14 AM | Report abuse
Still less encourangingly:
"The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican. Our best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is about 8-10 points more Democratic than the population as a whole."
Looks like a case of sample bias to me.
Posted by: tbass1 | September 10, 2009 2:23 PM | Report abuse
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What were the ratings? How many people watched.