AP Poll Finds Opposition to Obamacare Down to 30 percent

Don't believe it for a minute. The Weekly Standard explains why.

(Weekly Standard)- A widely reprinted AP story, based on a recent AP/GfK poll, is entitled, “Opposition to health care law eases.” Don’t believe it. What has eased isn’t the level of opposition to Obamacare, but rather the level of effort that AP/GfK has made to ensure that its polling sample is representative of American voters.

When the AP/GfK poll screened for likely voters a couple of weeks before the election, it estimated that 48 percent of voters leaned Republican and that 42 percent leaned Democratic (which the election showed to be about right). In its latest survey — the one that serves as the basis for the AP story — AP/GfK didn’t screen for likely voters and didn’t screen for registered voters. Instead, it merely surveyed 1,001 adults. The result?  The percentage of Democratic-leaning respondents stayed the same (42 percent), but the percentage of Republican-leaning respondents dropped by 12 points, to 36 percent.