Much of Health Care Plan Opposition Comes from Left

December 07, 2009

Much of Health Care Plan Opposition Comes from Left

Nate Silver looks at a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll that found 34% favored "the health care reform proposals presently being discussed", versus 46% opposed, and 20% undecided. These results are in line with many other recent polls on health care.

However, "it turns out that a significant minority of about 25% of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12% of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough."

"But the conventional wisdom -- and certainly my assumption -- has been that people oppose the plan because it's too liberal. In fact, some of the opposition seems to stem from the fact that the plan is not liberal enough. This would help to explain, for example, why polls show majorities (sometimes fairly sizable ones) in favor of the public option, but also pluralities or majorities opposed to the overall plan."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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December 07, 2009