If you’ve paid any attention to cable news today, you’ll see lots of play given to the new AP poll which says that opposition to Obamacare, which the House will vote to repeal this week, is melting down. The poll says only 41 percent of the public dislikes the President’s health care bill, against 40 percent who favor it.

But the poll is a classic example of rigging the sample to generate the numbers you want. The Weekly Standard has the details…

A widely reprinted AP story, based on a recent AP/GfK poll, is entitled, “Opposition to health care law eases.” Don’t believe it. What has eased isn’t the level of opposition to Obamacare, but rather the level of effort that AP/GfK has made to ensure that its polling sample is representative of American voters.

When the AP/GfK poll screened for likely voters a couple of weeks before the election, it estimated that 48 percent of voters leaned Republican and that 42 percent leaned Democratic (which the election showed to be about right). In its latest survey — the one that serves as the basis for the AP story — AP/GfK didn’t screen for likely voters and didn’t screen for registered voters. Instead, it merely surveyed 1,001 adults. The result?  The percentage of Democratic-leaning respondents stayed the same (42 percent), but the percentage of Republican-leaning respondents dropped by 12 points, to 36 percent.

As one would expect — with the same percentage of Democratic-leaning respondents having been surveyed both times — the level of support for Obamacare remained essentially unchanged: 41 percent supported it previously; 40 percent support it now. Just as unsurprisingly, when the percentage of Republican-leaning respondents dropped by 12 points, the level of opposition to Obamacare dropped by 11 points (from 52 to 41 percent). 

Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll finds 75 percent support for altering or repealing Obamacare, against just 18 percent who want to leave it like it is. A different Rasmussen survey says, by a 55-40 count, that Obamacare should be repealed – with 60 percent of the public saying they think Obamacare will make the deficit worse.

In the meantime, the Democrats seem to be busy attempting to equate a vote to repeal Obamacare with nasty politics. It’s difficult to understand why fulfilling the will of the public is somehow akin to promoting an uncivil tone, but that’s what’s out there this week.