[yammajr]

That's a little misleading. On the Obamacare question, only 11% said they didn't know what that was or that they didn't know enough about it, whereas on the Affordable Care Act question, 30% said that.

If you normalize those results to people who claimed to know about it, there is a small difference, but it comes close to falling within the margin of error (3.4%).

  ~~~  Obamacare   ACA
  ++     15.9      14.2
  +       17       17.1
  =      14.7      15.7
  -      12.5      18.5
  --     39.7      34.2

[mattnewton]

I don't think that's misleading, I think that's almost exactly the GP's point. People don't just vote on the issues, usually they vote one abstraction higher on the brand and the rhetoric around it.

[derefr]

It'd be intriguing to see what people would think if you made them decide whether they agreed/disagreed with the language of the bill itself (or a summary—by, say, a supreme-court justice—of the implications of the bill), with no mention of the name of the bill.

[mattnewton]

Annecdotes from my life suggest there is no easier way to make someone angry with you.

[derefr]

The specific point where they get angry is when you do a sweeping reveal that, gasp, "it was [hated bill] after all!", though, right? The question doesn't have to come with a "punchline"; you can just poll people once for their opinions about named bills, and then again separately for their opinions about un-named bill contents, and correlate these, without ever revealing to the second group what bills the quoted language comes from.

Or do you mean to suggest that people get angry immediately when they realize they're being asked for their genuine opinion about something which might turn out to be something they're expected to toe a party line about? If so, that's a very interesting effect, possibly a chilling effect to any potential for genuine informal conversation about these bills.

[mattnewton]

In my limited experience, people get angry when they feel tricked, so the former of those two suggestions. I agree that you could not tell them and get some good info.

[schoen]

Or, for non-bipartisan legislation, of the party that sponsored it.

[specialist]

Almost no one votes on the issues.

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...

"...show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters--even those who are well informed and politically engaged--mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly."

Those of us doing policy work using educate and persuade strategies need to adapt, up our game.

[dsp1234]

I think you're normalizing where you shouldn't. The commenter above said, "just coming right out an asking "Obamacare: repeal or keep?" with no preface.".

If that was the question asked, and we take the poll numbers as a proxy, then you end up with:

Obamacare:

29% - keep (very positive + somewhat positive)

46% - repeal (somewhat negative + very negative)

25% - unsure (neutral + don't know enough)

ACA:

22% - keep (very positive + somewhat positive)

37% - repeal (somewhat negative + very negative)

41% - unsure (neutral + don't know enough)

So in other words, even though the original poster was trying to say "cut the crap and just ask people", the difference by just changing Obamacare to ACA is a 7% swing in keep, and a 9% swing in repeal.

It's not like we normalize votes in the real world. We don't say "more people didn't know what that thing was, so we'll just fudge the numbers a bit". If people don't vote, then people don't vote. That's exactly why phrasing matters, and exactly why something like advice "asking Obamacare: repeal or keep" is so worrying.

[TimPC]

I think what's misleading here is some people want to repeal the ACA for single-payer and some want to repeal it for a less regulated healthcare market. So having a high repeal value doesn't really tell you what people want instead and likely shouldn't be taken as support for repeal and replace with effectively nothing.

[delazeur]

With apologies for the extremely unscientific anecdata, I've seen too many examples of individuals who profess to support the ACA while opposing Obamacare to believe that there isn't something here.