The Monkey Cage has gone on record recently arguing that _process_ in the health care reform debate is ultimately not going to matter that much (see “Henry”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/03/read_my_lips_voters_do_not_car.html and “John”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/02/is_the_process_driving_opinion.html) in terms of driving support for the bill. Well, now we can quantify “not much”.
This graph appeared last month in a “Gallup report”:http://www.gallup.com/poll/126191/Americans-Tilt-Against-Democrats-Plans-Summit-Fails.aspx. As a political scientist, I was less interested in the overall support levels (which apparently have already shifted a bit “in favor of passing reforms”:http://www.gallup.com/poll/126521/Favor-Oppose-Obama-Healthcare-Plan.aspx since these polls were taken), but rather in the difference between the two graphs.* According to Gallup, respondents were first asked if they favored passing the health care bill, and then asked if they favored passing it using reconcilliation. The “process” in this case apparently cost about 3% points of support. So it is not irrelevant, but hardly a game changer in terms of public opinion.
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bq. *Slightly more wonkish technical discussion: It should be noted that Gallup did not use a true experimental design here, with half of the respondents being randomly assigned to receive one version of the question and the other half the other. So it is possible that a desire to remain consistent might bias respondents towards giving the same answer to both questions. On the other hand, it may also be possible that the fact that the question about reconciliation was asked second may have been cuing respondents that there was something “different” about reconciliation, and, given the media’s fascination with the issue, that perhaps this was supposed to change their opinion. Personally, I find in interesting that the number of “don’t knows” didn’t change. This suggests that reconciliation is not really having any affect on people who don’t already have an opinion on health care, although of course it is possible that reconciliation pushed some supporters into don’t knows and don’t knows into opposing, although my gut instinct is that this is not likely to be the case. For those interested in Don’t Know responses, see Adam Berinsky’s “Silent Voices”:http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7757.html.