The polls that have been conducted since President Obama’s speech to Congress on Wednesday night collectively suggest that Obama improved his position on the issue of health care.
⢠Democracy Corps (D) conducted a dial-tested focus group of debate-watchers in Denver, Colorado, made up of swing voters who were almost evenly divided 54%-46% between Obama and John McCain in the 2008 election. Among this group, support and opposition of the health care plan went from 46%-46% before the speech, to 66%-30% afterward. In addition, before the speech only 44% described the plan as “the right kind of change,” with 52% saying it was not. That number then shifted to 50%-40% after the speech.
⢠A CNN snap poll from after the speech showed that speech-watchers increased in their support for Obama’s proposals, from 53% up to 67%. However, the caveat here is that the debate-watching audience was disproportionately Democratic compared to the general population: Democrats 45%, Republicans 18%, and the remainder independent.
⢠A new CBS poll this morning of the general population, not just people who watched the speech — meaning that we can get a measurement of how this has affected the whole country — found that Obama’s approval on the issue of health care reform has gone up. CBS re-interviewed the same respondents from a late August poll, in which Obama’s approval on health care was only 40%, to 47% disapproval. That number has now jumped up to 52%-38%.