Yuh oh. A Washington Post poll published last week said that 57% of American support a public option as part of health insurance reform. This has appeared to unnerve U.S. Representative Ed Royce — or at least pique his curiosity.
“The Washington Post claims that 57% of all Americans support a public
option,” he wrote in his e-mail newsletter. “I want to hear from my constituents. Do you support government
run health care?”
You can then click the “yes” or “no” option. There's no mention of the fact that what the named poll refers to — a public option — is a much narrower concept than “government run health care.”
But there is the implication that the results of a volunteer survey filled out by people on Royce's mailing list — which is presumably comprised mainly of his core supporters, conservative Republicans — holds can compete with a Washington Post poll.
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Just to give the good Congressman a wide sample, all Ed Royce constituents should be able to fill out the survey question, right? They can't, though, as far as we can tell. The survey only went out to Royce's subscribers, and the public newsletter seems to be a static page that doesn't accept survey submissions. Hmm. Weirder still: The survey appears meant to bring in new Royce newsletter subscribers — presumably, the only people who received the survey in the first place.
We might be doing something wrong here. Or Ed might be.
If we find a real, clickable Royce healthcare quiz, we'll post it for ya. In the meantime, let's check out some other public option poll numbers: 47% support according to NBC and the Wall Street Journal, and 57% (again!) according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
