Real Clear Politics Polls 2012: Rasmussen Polls May Have Steered Romney Away from RomneyCare

The presidential debates are about to kickoff and tracking polls are reporting data on Mitt Romney and President Obama. Real Clear Politics is a source for viewing a broad range of tracking polls including Rasmussen. The debate schedule will include time for talk of health care reform. What have tracking polls reported about the popularity of President Obama's health care plan ahead of the 2012 presidential debates?

Real Clear Politics reports all of the tracking polls on President Obama's health care plan in one place. My analysis of the polls shows that Fox News pollster Rasmussen has been releasing almost all the polls and there is a wide gap between Ramussen and every other poll. The skewed Rasmussen results may have led people to jump on the bandwagon and just call it unpopular, it may have led Mitt Romney to attack health care reform intensely even though it is modeled after his own plan and Obama even hired the team that wrote Romneycare. Overall the polls may have misled the American people.

Real Clear Politics has the collection of all the tracking data from Rasmussen polls here. Compare those numbers to the others poll numbers prior to watching Mitt Romney and President Obama in the 2012 presidential debates.  

Quinnipiac polls July 1 to July 8 showed that 49% favored repeal of Obamacare and 43% opposed repeal of Obamacare. This is a 6% spread.  

Ramussen polls from July 7 to July 8 showed 53% favor repeal and 41% oppose repeal. This is a 12% spread.  

CNN polls June 28 to July 1 showed 52% favor repeal and 46% oppose repeal. This is a 6% spread.  

Earlier polls, NBC News/ Wall Street Journal polls from April 13 to April 17 showed a 7% spread when Rasmussen was showing a 19% spread.  

Going back to earlier polls, January 15 to January 19 CBS News/New York Times tracking data showed that 40% of people were for repeal and 48% opposed repeal. There was an 8% spread with a majority of people opposing repeals. FOX News polls at the time showed 17% more favored repeal. The gap between the FOX News tracking poll and CBS was 25%.

As you can see the gap between FOX News Rasmussen tracking poll results on health care popularity has been vastly different than all other polls. When you take into account that Real Clear Politics reports 110 Rasmussen tracking polls on health care reform while a total of 22 polls were conducted by the 11 other polling groups it might seem like there was an agenda. 

Was Rasmussen's goal to release reports daily that scream, "Health Care Reform is Unpopular?"  Even, while one CBS poll showed a margin of 8% opposing repeal and Fox News showed a spread of 17% for repeal?

The law is filled with direct benefits that will impact all Americans. Does it make sense that women would oppose a law that requires insurance companies to charge equal for men and women? Prior to the law women paid 150% of what men did for insurance. Does it make sense that a law that makes it illegal for insurance companies to drop your coverage right when you get sick is unpopular? Prior to the law, "recisions," as they were called were legal. Now, when you get sick, your insurance will not drop you. My friend's father was dropped when he had heart surgery and instead of retiring he had to sell his house to pay the $148,000 bill. Do you want to risk being dropped when you get sick?

Read the full list of rights and protections that Obamacare adds here. Repealing the Affordable Care Act causes you and all American consumers to lose a wave of new rights and protections from the abuses of the insurance company.  

Something seems skewed here and I believe it impacted Romney's campaign. Skewed polling may have convinced Romney that health care reform was really unpopular and if he just promised to repeal it then he would be elected. The problem is that the plan was based on everything Romney believed would solve the health care crisis that employers said was greatly impacting hiring decisions. Obamacare is based on Romneycare.  

Now that you see why skewed polling may have led Romney to attack Obamacare. Watch three videos of Romney.

This video is Romney as governor pleased that the individual mandate, or "personal responsibility clause," was left in Romneycare.

Romney pioneered the individual mandate and was first to pass it in his state. The concept was created by the conservative Heritage Foundation to end free riders in the system. I describe how President Obama's Affordable Care Act reduces government socialism here.

Romney ran on his plan in the 2008 presidential elections. Watch him call for the mandate to be taken nationally.  

The individual mandate led to 98% of people in Massachusetts to now be covered by health insurance. President Obama saw this and in an act of leadership reached across the aisle to adopt a republican plan. Watch this video of President Obama's health care team. Obama hired Romney's team to write the Affordable Care Act. 

As you can see, dramatically skewed polling data probably led Mitt Romney to begin attacking the Affordable Care Act, which includes every policy solution to the health care crisis that he believes in.  

The Rasmussen tracking polls kept a constant message out about how unpopular health care reform was and showed results that were dramatically different than the other pollsters. Rasmussen polled constantly to keep the message as visible as possible showing that the Fox News pollster probably had an agenda. 

Now, as American Citizens are learning how the health care law benefits them Romney has begun to back track. Polls misled America; Rasmussen polls misled Romney. Now, Romney is pulling back his promises to repeal. View the direct benefits that the health care law provides to you on healthcare.gov.