56% Favor Repeal of Healthcare Law

Most voters still want to see President Obama’s healthcare law repealed, and a plurality believes repeal would be good for the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56 percent of likely U.S. voters favor repeal of the national healthcare law, while 38 percent are opposed. This includes 46 percent who strongly favor repeal and 29 percent who strongly oppose it.

That’s a bit more support for repeal than was found a week ago, but broadly consistent with results ever since the law was first passed in March 2010. Most voters have favored repeal in regular surveys for over two years.

A plurality (45 percent) of voters believes repeal would be good for the U.S. economy. Twenty-eight percent (28 percent) disagree and feel repeal would be bad for the economy. Fourteen percent (14 percent) say it would have no impact.

Most government employees (52 percent) are opposed to repeal. Among entrepreneurs, 61 percent favor repeal. So do 56 percent of those who work for someone else in the private sector.

Most Democrats (63 percent) oppose repeal, and two-out-of-three voters (67 percent) in the president’s party think the law will be good for the country. Eighty-seven percent (87 percent) of Republicans favor repeal, and a like number (87 percent) views the law as bad for the country.

Voters not affiliated with either of the major parties support repeal by a 52 percent to 42 percent margin. Forty-eight percent (48 percent) of these voters consider the law bad for the country.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted on August 10-11, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Overall, just 35 percent of voters now think repeal is likely versus 49 percent who rate repeal as unlikely. This includes only 11 percent who say it’s very likely to occur and nine percent (9 percent) who believe it’s not at all likely. Just prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in late June upholding the constitutionality of the healthcare law, 61 percent felt repeal was likely. This is the first time since September 2010 that confidence in the likelihood of repeal has fallen into the 30s.

Still, most voters (51 percent) believe the healthcare law will be bad for the country while 37 percent think it will be good.

Thirty-one percent (31 percent) think repeal will lead to the creation of more jobs, but 38 percent don’t believe that to be true. Another 31 percent are not sure. This, too, is consistent with earlier findings.

The political class remains a bigger supporter of the healthcare law than Mainstream voters are.

Most GOP voters (51 percent) still think repeal is likely, but just 29 percent of unaffiliateds and 23 percent of Democrats share that view.

Most provisions of the healthcare law are not scheduled to kick in until 2013 and 2014. Just 15 percent of voters say they have been personally helped by passage of the law so far, while 25 percent say they’ve been hurt by it. Fifty-seven percent (57 percent) have not felt any impact from the healthcare law yet.