53% either support the ACA or say it's not liberal enough

[RainDog]

http://freakoutnation.com/2013/10/21/53-percent-either-support-obamacare-or-say-its-not-liberal-enough-majority-want-john-boehner-replaced/

A few excerpts to savor via CNN:

“According to the poll, just more than four in 10 say they favor the law, with 56% opposed to it. But of those opposed, 38% say they are against the law because they think it’s too liberal and 12% say it’s not liberal enough. That means that 53% either support Obamacare, or say it’s not liberal enough.

“We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win,” Boehner said at the end of the shutdown. And while he received a standing ovation at a closed gathering of House Republicans as the crisis came to a close, he may not see anything to applaud in the new poll.

“John Boehner fares just as badly as the GOP,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “Sixty-three percent of all Americans think that Boehner should be replaced as Speaker of the House, a view shared by roughly half of all Republicans.”

The survey indicates that the approval rating for Congress remains near an all-time low. Only 12% of those questioned say they approve of the job Congress is doing, just two points higher than the historic low in CNN polling. And 86% give federal lawmakers a thumbs-down, also near the all-time high.

This aligns with the reality that Americans are more liberal than politicians realize. The Republicans really overshot their assumptions - or they just simply lied, like when Cruz said he polls showed support for his action.

http://election.democraticunderground.com/101674947

When we compare what legislators believe their constituents want to their constituents’ actual views, we discover that politicians hold remarkably inaccurate perceptions. Pick an American state legislator at random, and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about district views on big-ticket issues, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points.

What is more, the mistakes legislators make tend to fall in one direction, giving U.S. politics a rightward tilt compared to what most voters say they want. As the following figures show, legislators usually believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. Our attitude measurements are most accurate on the questions about same sex marriage and universal health insurance – and in both instances the legislators’ guesses about their constituents’ views were 15-20 percent more conservative, on average, than the true public support for same-sex marriage or universal health care present in their districts.

Our study also found that politicians don’t learn in the normal course of events. After November 2012, we posed the same questions again to some candidates. Even after conducting campaigns and seeing the results, politicians did not arrive at more accurate perceptions of constituent views—not even those who had spent more time talking to voters. Much remains to be learned about why U.S. legislators think constituents are more conservative than they truly are, but researchers have found that politically active citizens tend to be wealthier and more conservative than others. Politicians who want to represent all the people in their districts need to keep this in mind.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth