by Chris Nava, VP for Political Action

Polling conducted in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election by Gallup, Hart Research, and pollster Scott Rasmussen and others shows a sampling of  state of voter’s views on the future of health care reform. How we interpret the poll results has everything to do with how we see the glass.  Is it half full, or is it half empty?

Brown Didn’t Get Many Votes Because Of Health Care, According To Poll

The AFL-CIO has sponsored some health care polling from Hart Research, and it suggests somewhat plainly that Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts was not, in fact, propelled by opposition to the health care reform agenda being pursued by President Obama and congressional Democrats.  Read more…

Poll: Majority of Massachusetts Health Voters Wanted to Save Reform

In the absence of exit polls from the dramatic special Senate race in Massachusetts, it’s hard to analyze what exactly happened and why. That hasn’t stopped everyone (OK, including me) from doing just that.

But now we do have an intriguing and counter-intuitive nugget from a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 people who voted in the special election. A solid majority — 56 percent — said health care was their top issue. And 53 percent of them voted for . . . Democrat Martha Coakley. So, more people motivated by the health issue wanted to save reform than kill it.  Read more…

Setting the record straight: media coverage of MA health care plan

A media watchdog group today took aim at a Wall Street Journal colunmn that said Republican Scott Brown was elected Tuesday in part because Massachusetts voters oppose government- funded health care.

Kim Strassel wrote in yesterday’s WSJ that Brown “turned his Senate bid into a referendum on President Obama’s health plan” and went on to claim that one reason is that the state’s universal health care program “bombed”

“In fact, a recent poll shows that a majority in Massachusetts support the 2006 state plan.”

Read more…

Other sources:

Democratic panic and the meaning of Massachusetts, by Prof. Jerome Karabel
(“there is little reason to believe that the Massachusetts vote was a referendum on health care”)
Huffington Post, January 22, 2010

Brown’s Massachusetts victory fueled by frustration with Washington, poll shows

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