Spin in Polling: The Healthcare Debate

By Katie LaPotin

Taking a small break from British politics for the moment, across the pond in the United States Republicans and Democrats alike are dealing with the aftermath of the healthcare vote in Congress. Republicans are celebrating for the most part while Democrats in swing seats are working on saving face. Almost all polls taken over the past six months have a majority of Americans opposing the reforms just passed by Congress last month, and a Quinnipiac poll taken just after the bill passed has 49% of registered voters disapproving of the changes.

American voters generally agree on the need for healthcare reform. This has never been the issue at stake. Where the debate comes in is over the implementation of the reform. And that is where spin doctoring comes in…

Republican pollster Frank Luntz once said that “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.” There are few times that this is truer than now. I work as a pollster by trade, and I see this phenomenon occur all the time. If I were to write a survey asking the question “Do you agree or disagree that health care reform is needed?” a majority of voters would likely agree. They would also agree if the question read “Do you agree or disagree that healthcare reform is needed to make the process less bureaucratic?” or “Do you agree or disagree that health care reform is needed so everyone has the opportunity to have healthcare insurance?”

Yet, looking at polling conducted over the past year on the topic, this is not the case. Looking at one recent poll in particular:

Q. As you may know, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are trying to pass final legislation that would make major changes in the country’s health care system. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor or generally oppose it? (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, 19-21 March 2010, n=1053 adults, MoE=+3.0%)

39% Favor
59% Oppose
2% No Opinion

A follow-up question was then asked to those voters who opposed the reform:

Q. (IF OPPOSE) Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach towards healthcare is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?

39% Favor (from previous question)
43% Oppose, too Liberal
13% Oppose, not Liberal enough
5% No Opinion

As you can tell, there is bias to these questions—albeit not a political one. In the follow-up question, the pollster is trying to elicit a specific response from the voters about the political situation in Washington, D.C.—they want to know whether they think the Democrats in Washington have overstepped their bounds while writing the legislation. The same question could be used to ask about environmental policy, or gun control, or educational reforms.

And this is how all of the questions used by pollsters nationwide are being worded—less about the legislation and more about the reaction. And that my friends, is spin. Rather than looking at whether the American people want healthcare reform, we are asking about healthcare reform to spin the debate away from the general desire for reform to the public option, or whether the legislation has become political, or even if the Federal Government should be involved in the process of healthcare reform at all?

Spin is omnipresent and fits in well in the political world. To me, there is no politics without spin. And to some extent, there is no spin without politics.

The Death of Spin?

by Kyle Taylor

Here with an entire online space dedicated to understanding and analyzing spin, it seems pertinent to raise the question, does spin even exist anymore, or has it just been replaced with flat-out lies?  There is a certain art-form to “spin.”  You’re taking the truth and finding the angle that’s most advantageous to your side of the argument.  Take the health care debate in the USA, for example.  Democrats spin the debate to lowering costs and covering more people.  Republicans spin the debate to big government and Communism.  At least, that’s the way it used to work.

Now, it seems, when most people support something (like health care reform) and your spin isn’t working, you just start lying.  You may argue there is a fine line.  After all, what is truth anyway?  We’ll save that question for a much more philosophical blog.  The difference between perception and reality can be quite enormous and spin attempts to turn reality into your desired perception.  I think politicians do know the difference and recently, when their perception hasn’t really “stuck,” they’ve decided it’s better to just make stuff up.  After all, once it’s on TV, it’s true!  Lets take Sarah Palin and her claim of death panels – this notion that the government will set up boards where old people have to go and essentially defend why the government shouldn’t kill them.  No, seriously, people believed this.  Or that the IRS is going to hire 16,000 new people to tax those who don’t get health care.  Also totally not true.

Entirely unrelated, Senator Scott Brown has started suggesting that Rachel Maddow, a TV commentator, is planning a bid for his Senate seat; a claim she has denied about 100 times in this video.

Does it matter that she has denied it?  Absolutely not, because he already said it!  It’s a tell strategy coming from a party that doesn’t offer new ideas or even new spin on old ideas.  It’s like they had a big meeting to discuss how their ideas are wildly unpopular then some guy in the back shouted, “how about we just make stuff up?” leading to the inevitable group think of nodding heads and big smirks of old white men who are so disconnected with public opinion, the only way they can get something done is to make stuff up.

So then, is spin dead?  Is lying the new spinning, or is there hope that this art form will somehow survive this all to destructive denigration of politics?