Research conducted with 49 voters in Tempe, Arizona, who watched President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress prove that the speech was effective at alleviating concerns of voters and impressing on them that the President has a strong plan to reform health care. Even among those voters who held neutral or negative opinions of the President, substantial positive movement was shown as the proportion of these participants supporting the President's plan increased by nearly 40% after the speech
Further, in both the dial ratings and the post-speech discussion, participants indicated that they learned more specifics of the President's health reform plan, which, in many cases, countered false concerns or myths that they had heard about the proposal.
The most strongly rated passages of the President's speech (with average ratings of 80 or above) break into three areas: 1) specific goals of reform (i.e., the specifics of the insurance industry reforms, increasing insurance industry accountability, and ensuring choice and competition); 2) the need for change now (i.e., the unacceptability of the status quo and that the time for bickering is over); 3) the relationship between health care reform and American values. This language can be used by Democrats as the debate moves forward.
The memo goes on to report that the elimination of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions scored "nearly 90 on the 0-100 scale." This marks the "highest sustained positive ratings in the speech." Other popular themes are holding insurance companies accountable and increasing choice and competition.
Of course, this comes from the DNC, so critics will find it immediately suspect. Others will try to find fault with the methodology -- they've done this with CNN's numbers, saying that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in their sample, when that sample represented an accurate breakdown of the audience. If I had to bet on what criticism will be offered (other than being paid for by the Democratic Party), my money would be on sample size. People don't seem to understand the difference between a focus group and a survey. But serious observers and commenters will probably trust the findings.
"The memo doesn't say what the panelists didn't like -- and one wouldn't expect to find such a thing in a DNC memo -- but Binder's work [the pollster hired by the DNC for the study] is well respected and he is seen as honest by Republican pollster colleagues," writes the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder.
I'd add that, while good numbers give dems an incentive to leak the numbers, there's no similar incentive for the DNC to lie to itself about the findings.
