First Obama’s poll numbers began to rebound. Now Greg Sargent has dug into a Bloomberg Poll and found a majority of Americans have grown wise to the scare tactics of August:
Sixty-three percent said the claim that “death panels of government officials would decide how much medical care ailing individuals will receive” is a scare tactic, versus 30% who said it’s legit.
Sargent then asks exactly the right question about Bloomberg’s questions:
How to square these numbers with other polls showing a far more credulous public? My bet is that by explicitly offering people the choice of seeing an assertion as a “scare tactic,” it encourages far more skepticism than polls that merely ask whether people agree with the claims. (Emphasis mine)
Here’s the question Bloomberg asked:
I’m going to mention some things that have been talked about recently as part of a plan to reform health care. For each, please tell me if you think this is a legitimate issue or a distortion or scare tactic.
When it comes to polling, sometimes the answer is in the question. I’ve been saying that for weeks about the public option.
