Well, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve been called at some point in the past with election-specific questions, but this was the first time I was asked whether I approve or disapprove of Obama and the House Republicans.\u00a0 Wow \u2013 was this a long poll.<\/p>\n
The first thing I learned is the context behind the \u201cAmericans don\u2019t know the difference between the Affordable Care Act and Obmamcare\u201d assertion.\u00a0 At some point midway through the poll I was asked to rate, on a scale of 0 to 100, various people, laws, groups, etc.\u00a0 The ACA was there, then Obama, Boehner, the NRA, right-to-life groups, and then Obamacare \u2013 and I certainly didn\u2019t remember exactly how I\u2019d rated the ACA by the time she got to Obamacare.\u00a0 (Yes, in hindsight, I could have said, \u201cdidn\u2019t you already ask about that?\u00a0 Can you tell me what I said previously?\u201d but I assumed that the questions\/responses didn\u2019t stay on her screen after she input them.<\/p>\n
There were also a long series of questions along the lines of \u201cIf I told you X, how would it\u00a0change your opinion of the Healthcare Reform Act\/Affordable Care Act\/ObamaCare\u201d \u2014 with the list of items being things like \u201cinsurance companies have to act like insurance companies and not charge you more when you get sick or get older,\u201d \u201cprovides free contraception,\u201d \u201crequires insurance companies to cover maternity and reproductive health care,\u201d etc.\u00a0 And there was a list of \u201cwill X component impact you directly negatively, positively or not at all\u201d \u2014 for which I felt compelled to say \u201cnot at all\u201d for most of them because, having insurance through my employer, I\u2019m insulated from most such impacts \u2014 though I did tell her that the free contraception would be a negative impact (because that will increase our health insurance premiums \u2014 both the portion our family pays directly and the portion the employer pays, which sucks up an increasing portion of the benefits\/compensation dollar).\u00a0 I suppose I could have said \u201cnegatively\u201d for all of these, insofar as each goodie drives up the cost, which drives up the subsidies, which increases taxes on the rest of us directly or indirectly.\u00a0\u00a0 But in a way, this is the sort of thing where the \u201cright\u201d answer isn\u2019t an objective thing.\u00a0 How will this poll be used and interpreted by pundits, politicians, academics?<\/p>\n
There were also what I imagine to be fairly standard questions of \u201cif the next election were held today, who would you vote for?\u201d at the congressional level and more generically, and \u201cwho did you vote for in the past?\u201d\u00a0 And my identification of myself as a \u201cRepublican\u201d but not a \u201cstrong\u201d Republican might seem incongruous with my party-line answers, but it\u2019s hard to express in a poll the fact that Republicans are doing a stinky job (for instance, as I\u2019ve said multiple times on this blog, failing to come up with an effective \u201creplace\u201d option for ObamaCare and in the current debate, having an ever-shifting list of demands).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And the very last question was asking for my first name \u201cfor verification purposes\u201d \u2014 which I\u2019m guessing means that the woman did not have this information in front of her, and a database would determine whether there really was a \u201cJane\u201d in the household so as to do a cross-check to confirm that she wasn\u2019t making up these responses for lack of an individual willing to respond.\u00a0 And they tried three times \u2014 the first two were during the day and I ignored them \u2014 so I don\u2019t know if this says they\u2019re desperate for respondants or just that when a computer pulls your name, they throw it in the rotation multiple times.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve been called at some point in the past with election-specific questions, but this was the first time I was asked whether I approve or disapprove of Obama and the House Republicans.\u00a0 Wow \u2013 was this a long poll. The first thing I learned is the context behind the \u201cAmericans don\u2019t know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n