On the eve of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision announcement, Public Policy Polling (June 21-24; 1,000 registered voters) conducted a national survey of attitudes and impressions regarding the political leadership associated with the healthcare issue. The results are interesting, and potentially disheartening for President Obama and his party.
In answering the question about which candidate the respondents trusted more pertaining to healthcare issues of the greatest importance to they and their individual families, by a surprisingly close 45-44 percent count, the polling sample favored presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Perhaps even more stunning, by a margin of only 47-43 percent, the cell group said they trusted the president on healthcare more than the congressional Republicans. For the better part of time since the 2006 election campaign, congressional Republicans in particular, have been scoring poorly on favorability index questions. So, it is unusual to see them virtually at parity with the President on his signature issue.
But, perhaps the most surprising response of all came to the question as to which candidate had the most clear stance on healthcare. Despite the passage of his healthcare plan being the president’s most significant domestic agenda accomplishment and Romney being less defined, Obama only tops the Republican by a slight 45-42 percent margin when claiming that one candidate or the other has the more clear stances on the healthcare issue.
As one more indicator that the healthcare issue will be one that helps determine the outcome of this presidential election, the PPP survey sample would vote for the president over Romney by a 48-45% margin, quite in line with their specific healthcare answers.
