Two new polls released this week show that support of the Affordable Care Act is at its highest level since 2010.
A tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, released Friday, said 48 percent of respondents felt favorably toward the health care law, as opposed to 42 percent who felt unfavorably. A poll from the Pew Research Center, released Thursday, found that 54 percent of respondents approved of the law, and 43 percent disapproved, the highest approval the poll had ever recorded for the law.
Both polls noted a shift among independents in their feelings about the law: In October, according to Pew, 41 percent of independents approved of the law, compared to 53 percent in December, and the same number in February.
Kaiser found that, for the first time, independents supported the law on net: Fifty percent reported they viewed the ACA favorably, while 39 viewed it unfavorably.
The news comes as Republican members of Congress have promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. So far there is no consensus replacement for the law. Former House Speaker John Boehner, a proponent of the “repeal and replace” line for years, said Thursday that it was “not going to happen.”
Meanwhile, town halls across the country have grown heated, with constituents pressuring their representatives in Washington on specifics about the status of the health care law.
Pew conducted telephone interviews among a national sample of 1,503 adults from Feb. 7-12. The sample had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. Kaiser conducted telephone interviews among a national sample of 1,160 adults from Feb. 13-19. The sample had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
