Here’s another installment of recent polling by Roby Brock at Talk Business and Hendrix College on Arkansas political issues.
* HEALTH CARE: Respondents favored, 49.5 to 38, developing a state plan to implement the federal health care law rather than wait for court ruling that might invalidate the federal legislation. The framing of the question is important, Jay Barth notes. Local control. That’s how Gov. Mike Beebe framed it, but Republicans and a few Democrats weren’t inclined to go along.
* ADOPTION: Respondents disapproved, again 49.5 to 38, of the Arkansas Supreme Court ruling striking down the law that prohibits placement of adopted or foster children in homes with cohabiting couples. Barth saw a bright spot in a disapproval percentage below a majority, against the 57 percent that approved this legislation. I’m also inclined to see some poll bias encouraged by the wording of the question about “placement” of children in such homes. It’s accurate. But you could almost read this as a disinterested state’s random placement of kids in sinners’ homes, as opposed to the actual process, in which well-screened, committed would-be parents badly WANT to bring children without families into their homes. But my bias is for the kids, not the matrimonial state of potential parents.