What we’ve got here…

John McCormack highlights this paragraph from the latest USA Today/Pew poll of registered voters:

Views of ACA Little Changed. As other recent national polls have shown, including the April health care tracking survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the recent surge in signups for the new health care exchanges has had little impact on public opinion about the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the share disapproving of the law (55%) is as high as it ever has been in the four-year history of the law. Just 41% approve of the 2010 health care law.

The USA Today/Pew poll reflects the views of registered voters. Sentiment among likely voters would probably be even grimmer for Democrats than this summary summary provided by McCormack:

Back in October, before the national health care law was implemented and during the government shutdown, Pew found that Democrats held a big 6-point lead on the generic congressional ballot (49 percent to 43 percent). Republicans now have a strong 4-point lead over Democrats on the generic ballot (47 percent to 43 percent)–the best the GOP has performed in 20 years at this point in an election cycle in a Pew surge

The USA Today story by Susan Page and Kendall Breitman on the poll is full of grim tidings for Democrats.

RealClearPolitics aggregates poll results on Obamaacare here (screenshot below; the red line represents disapproval). The current poll average shows disapproval at 51.8 percent, approval at 41.3 percent. Since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, disapproval has exceed approval.

Screen Shot 2014-05-05 at 6.39.13 AM

As the warden explains in Cool Hand Luke (video below), what we’ve got here is failure to communicate. A majority of registered voters hasn’t gotten Obama’s message that the debate on Obamacare is over, at least in the sense Obama means it. If the debate is over, Obama lost it. Voters think that disapproval remains an option and they’re feeling it.

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