‘Not One State Supports the Republican Health Care Bill’ – NY Times gets it HALF right
“Not One State Supports the Republican Health Care Bill” is part of the headline on a fresh New York Times article, which reads in part:
To get a sense of support by state, we combined recent polls to estimate support for the A.H.C.A. in every senator’s home state. Our estimates indicate that not one state favors it.
Even though very few state polls have been conducted on views of the A.H.C.A., we are able to estimate views on the bill in each state using a statistical method called M.R.P. (multilevel regression and poststratification) and eight national polls that the Kaiser Family Foundation, YouGov and Public Policy Polling shared with us on people’s views on the A.H.C.A.
While no polling system is infallible, our M.R.P. model combines respondents’ demographic characteristics, their state and their views of the A.H.C.A. to estimate the probability that a voter of a certain age, race and gender, and in a state with certain characteristics, would support the proposal. It then estimates support for the bill within every state based on each state’s demographics. Models like this have been used to accurately predict public opinion in states on other topics, and in last week’s election in Britain.
We found that Republicans have produced a rare unity among red and blue states: opposition to the A.H.C.A.
The other half of the headline? “G.O.P. Senators Might Not Realize It, but…”
Um, no.
Republicans are obsessive about polling data. But they just don’t care. They are loyal to party and ideology, and an important facet of that ideology – along with tha of Trumpism – is to erase everything President Barack Obama did to better this nation and its citizens.
That is what the G.O.P.’s financial backers pay them to do.
Just don’t count on the New York Times, which in large part has become just another right wing rag, to tell you the real story.
