Gallup release new polling Friday which shows that a majority of Americans, 52 percent, want to see Obamacare either scaled back or repealed outright.
Gallup asked respondents to choose what they would like to see Congress do about the law. The options included expanding it, keeping it the same, scaling it back or repealing it. Scaling back or repealing beat out expanding or the status quo 52-37.
The current numbers are worse for the law than in mid-October when the response was 50-38. In part this may have been because the government shutdown kept the law’s problems off the front pages for the first half of the month.
Gallup broke down the numbers further by looking at Democrats, Independents and Republicans. The largest moves since October came in two areas: Democrats used to be for keeping the law over expanding it 46-22. However this month that has shifted to 31-34, meaning a slightly larger group of Democrats now want to expand the law.
On the other side of the aisle, Republican support for scaling back was 26 percent in October. This month the popularity of scaling the law back has declined slightly to 22 percent. Meanwhile the repeal option has jumped from 57 percent in October to 68 percent this month.
In short, both sides of the debate are polarizing toward the edges, with Republicans increasingly seeking repeal and Democrats increasingly seeking expansion.
Gallup notes that the current divide falls short of the high point of opposition to the law in January 2011. Back then the same questions yielded a 57-37 split.
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