Newswise — Massachusetts residents are split down the middle over whether they support the national health care reform legislation recently enacted in Washington, according to the latest survey from the Western New England College Polling Institute.
The telephone survey of 528 adults, conducted April 11-15, found that 46 percent of residents back the legislation, while 45 percent oppose it. Among those who oppose the measure, 84 percent say it goes too far in making changes, while 13 percent say the bill does not go far enough.
The survey also found that how members of the state’s Congressional delegation voted on health care reform could resonate in future elections in Massachusetts. Among 481 registered voters, 35 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress in the future if he or she had supported the legislation. Twenty-five percent said they would be more likely to back those candidates, while 38 percent said the vote would make no difference.
Bay State residents are pessimistic about potential benefits from national health care reform. Only 16 percent of adults said that the legislation will improve the quality of care that they receive, while 40 percent said the bill will reduce the quality of care and 38 percent said it will make no difference. More than half of those surveyed – 54 percent –said the legislation will increase the amount of money they pay for health care, while only 10 percent said the bill will reduce the amount they pay and 29 percent said it will make no difference.
“Even in Massachusetts, the cradle of health care reform, there isn’t a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the national health care legislation,” said Tim Vercellotti, director of the Polling Institute and an associate professor of political science at Western New England College.
Support for the legislation does, however, vary by political party, age and household income:• Three-quarters of registered voters who identify themselves as Democrats support the legislation, compared to 46 percent of independent voters and only 7 percent of Republicans.• Fifty-four percent of residents age 65 and older back the changes, compared to 41 percent of those ages 30 to 49 years old. • As household income increases, so does opposition to the legislation. Only 35 percent of respondents with household incomes of less than $35,000 oppose the bill for going too far in making changes, compared to 46 percent of residents with household incomes of $100,000 or more.
The political repercussions of voting for the bill also vary along partisan and demographic lines. Forty-eight percent of Democrats said that they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supported the bill in Congress, while 75 percent of Republicans said they are less likely to back such a candidate. About one-third of independent voters said they would be less likely, and only 24 percent said they would be more likely.
As age increases, so too does the likelihood of supporting a candidate who voted in favor of the bill. One-third of senior citizens said they would be more likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported the bill, while only 19 percent of those ages 30 to 49 said the same.
Pessimism about the potential benefits of the legislation varied along similar lines, but even groups that tended to support the bill were not very confident that it would improve the quality of health care they receive. Only 25 percent of Democrats said the reforms would improve the quality of care, while 13 percent said the changes would reduce the quality of care and 53 percent said the reforms would make no difference.
Among senior citizens, 20 percent said their care would improve as a result of the reforms, while 33 percent said the quality of care would decline and 40 percent said the changes would not make a difference.
Groups that are critical of the legislation have a far more negative view of its potential impact. Eighty-three percent of Republican voters said the legislation would reduce the quality of care they receive, as did almost half of respondents with household incomes of $100,000 or higher.
Across the board, majorities of almost every partisan and demographic group said they expect to pay more for health care as a result of the legislation. Democratic voters were one of the few exceptions – only 33 percent expect to pay more for health care as a result of the bill. By contrast, 87 percent of Republican voters said they expect to pay more under the new legislation.
METHODOLOGY
The Western New England College Polling Institute conducted telephone interviews with 528 adults ages 18 and older drawn from across Massachusetts using random-digit-dialing April 11-15, 2010. The sample yielded 481 adults who said they were registered to vote in Massachusetts. Unless otherwise noted, figures in this release are based on the statewide sample of all adults. The data were weighted to reflect the adult population of Massachusetts by gender, race and age. Complete results of the poll are available online at www.wnec.edu/news.
The sampling error for a sample of 528 adults is +/- 4 percent, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Thus if 50 percent of adults said they support the health care reform legislation that passed in Washington recently, one would be 95 percent sure that the true figure would be between 46 percent and 54 percent (50 percent +/- 4 percent) had all Massachusetts adults been interviewed, rather than just a sample. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters is +/- 4.5 percent. Sampling error increases as the sample size decreases, so statements based on various population subgroups are subject to more error than are statements based on the total sample. Sampling error does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion studies, such as non-response, question wording, or context effects.
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