A new poll from NBC and the Wall Street Journal is getting some attention today for showing a big jump in support for Obamacare now that Republicans are talking about getting rid of it. But this poll shows less than it seems. The last time it was taken was March 2015, so all it tells us is that one poll shows an increase in approval sometime over the past two years. For comparison, here’s the NBC/WSJ poll overlaid on the monthly Kaiser tracking poll:
The Kaiser poll shows roughly a two-point increase over the past two years, all of it coming in the fall of 2016. Will it show another increase in January? Maybe, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, the NBC/WSJ poll tells us very little. It doesn’t show any kind of increase in the past month, just an increase over the past two years. And even that might be an artifact of sampling error in its March 2015 poll. I’m just as eager to see an increase in public approval of Obamacare as anybody, but the NBC/WSJ poll literally tells us nothing about the past month or two. In another few weeks both Gallup and Kaiser should give us some real data to chew on.
