This article was co-authored by Bill McInturff and Alex Bratty.

As the debate over health care heats up and President Obama starts to sell his plan in earnest to the American people, he’s facing a pretty significant perception gap between what the public believe he’s focused on and what they think he should be focused on.

In our latest NBC/WSJ poll,* 69% of the public believe President Obama’s health care plan is focused on addressing people who are not covered by insurance while just 12% believe it addresses the cost of health care.

Those perceptions are in stark contrast to the 42% who say the president and Congress should be focused on the uninsured and the almost equivalent proportion (39%) who say they should be focused on the cost of health care.

As you might expect partisan persuasion plays a key role in attitudes on this issue.  Republicans favor cost (53%) over the uninsured (26%) while a majority of Independents would prioritize the uninsured (52%) over cost (31%).  Interestingly though, Democrats are a little more divided with 47% leaning towards the uninsured, 33% in favor of dealing with cost, and 18% volunteering the response that the president and Congress should be dealing with both.  Of particular note is that White Obama voters track closely with the overall public (37% cost / 42% uninsured).

The president has just begun to lay out his health care plan, and with 34% of Americans saying they don’t know enough about it to have an opinion, the data would suggest the public has yet to truly engage on the issue.  But, there is no doubt this is a large and potentially troublesome perception gap for the Obama Administration to start with as it heads down the bumpy road of tackling health care reform.

(This analysis is based on a bipartisan survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies together with Peter D. Hart Research Associates for NBC/WSJ.  Neither Peter D. Hart Research Associates nor NBC/WSJ are responsible for these conclusions.)

*National survey of 1,005 adults conducted April 23-26, 2009.

(The article was co-authored by Matthew Jason.)

We have all heard about how the young voters helped elect President Barack Obama last year, and it is very hard to argue this fact. According to CNN Exit Polls, Obama defeated McCain sixty-six percent (66%) to thirty-two percent (32%) among voters ages 18-24 and sixty-six percent (66%) to thirty-one percent (31%) among voters ages 25-29. Even voters ages 30-39 voted for President Obama by a margin of fifty-four percent (54%) to forty-four percent (44%).

Current polling suggests that these young voters still view President Obama very positively and approve of the job he is doing as President. The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey released last week shows President Obama with a personal image among 18-34 year olds of sixty-three percent (63%) positive and only twenty-one percent (21%) negative. Further, forty-two percent (42%) of the18-34 year olds interviewed said they have a very positive opinion of President Obama. Similarly, sixty-three percent (63%) of this younger demographic said they approve of the job being done by President Obama, and only twenty-seven percent (27%) said they disapprove of the President’s job.

Is it fair then to surmise that this younger voter demographic is now a loyal constituency that the Democratic Party can count on in future elections? Maybe not. On the same NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey, only forty-four percent (44%) of 18-34 year olds said they had a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, and only eighteen percent (18%) said they had a very positive opinion. These numbers somehow do not sound very positive in comparison to the sixty-three percent (63%) who said they view Barack Obama and the job he is doing positively.

“But Americans hate the Republican Party, and it is in decline.” We hear this all the time, but it simply is not true. Americans do currently view the Democratic Party more positively than they do the Republican Party, but the contrast is not nearly as stark as media reports would lead you to believe, even among these young voters who are so supportive of President Obama. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey, thirty-four percent (34%) of 18-34 year old Americans view the Republican Party positively, and thirty-three percent (33%) view it negatively.

Thirty percent (30%) of Americans ages 18-34 are currently withholding judgement on the Republican Party and saying they view the party in a neutral manner. If Republicans are able to formulate their own policy alternatives that appeal to younger voters, it is certainly conceivable that Republican candidates in districts across the country could benefit from these younger voters being involved in the political process in 2010. The burden is on Republicans to come up with ideas to win the young voters over. Being against everything President Obama does is just not the answer.

It certainly looks that way according to the trend lines. I’ve been keeping tabs on movement in the West, and the positive shifts we have seen this year point to a very different electoral environment than what we faced in November of 2008.

Most notably … the generic congressional ballot. Given our volume of national survey work, POS has the unique luxury of examining merged data across multiple national surveys. This provides significantly larger, and more stable, cell sizes for our examination of Western states.

In our national data set merging national studies conducted in 2009, the generic Republican candidate trails by just two points (41{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} GOP/43{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} Dem). In Western States, the generic Republican now leads by a 49{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}-41{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} margin.

This marks a shift back to a voting pattern more typical of 2004. It is quite possible that the elections of 2006 and 2008 were aberrations and symptomatic of a frustrated electorate now showing signs of rebounding back into the GOP column.

Importantly, the tilt toward the GOP holds in the “New Southwest” states of Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, the key battleground states in the West. In our 2009 data set, the Republican candidate holds a 49{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222}-42{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} margin over the Democrat.

Likewise, this shift represents a rebound into what might be classified as a more typical voting pattern for voters in Southwestern states. Arguably, voters are returning to the GOP fold following their brief flirtation with Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

What does it mean? Voters in the West may now have second thoughts about the steps they took in expressing their frustrations with GOP leadership. With Democrats firmly in control in Washington, voters may be moving back to their roots … or looking for greater balance.

More to come on this topic next week… stay tuned.

NOTE: For the purposes of this analysis, we have not included California in the group of Western states. Western states include: AZ, CO, ID, NV, NM, ND, OR, SD, UT, WY, WA.

It’s of no surprise to anyone that the partisan gap between Republicans and Democrats has widened over the past two-three years.  Our recent national poll (April 19-21, 800 registered voters) pegs the partisan affiliation data at 30% GOP, 37% DEM and 32% IND.  In an effort to probe a little deeper into the GOP attrition, we asked Republicans, Democrats and Independents whether they had always affiliated with their partisan choice, or was there a time when they considered themselves a different partisan stripe.

First of all, we found that two-thirds of voters (66.4%) say they have always adhered to their political partisanship and have not strayed.  And, we found between one-fifth and one-quarter of current partisans used to consider themselves supporters of the other party.

And, interestingly, when we recalculated the data to include the lapsed partisans with their former parties, we find Democrats with a slim 41%-38% margin in party affiliation – very similar to national data from President George W. Bush’s first term in office.

The data shows that fully 16.8% of all voters in the electorate say they used to consider themselves Republicans, and no longer do.

Here’s a few of our key findings:

• There’s probably a pretty good reason why some polling has shown Independents not as glowing in their support of President Obama and more willing to opt for “checks and balances”in the 2010 election – current Independents seem to “lean” toward the GOP.

  While 51% of Independents say they have always been Independent, fully 31% describe themselves as former Republicans, compared to 16% who say they are former Democrats.

  These Independent former-GOP’ers tend to be white men, southerners, suburban voters with college degrees, moderate or conservative in political ideology and married.

• While 71% of Republicans say they have always described themselves that way, 25% say they are former Democrats and just 3% former Independents.

  These former Democrats tend to be older (half are 55+), white, non-Northeast residents, non-rural, higher educated and conservative.

• Finally, 77% of Democrats say they have always been D’s, 18% are former R’s, and 4% are former Independents.

  Not unexpectedly, Democrats who are former GOP’ers tend to be white suburban women, lower educated and moderate in political ideology.  (Sounds like the profile of the usual swing voter in most states/districts.)

For Republicans, this data reinforces the need to put aside the outdated targeting recipe for victory (95% of R’s, 55% of I’s, 10% of D’s) and replace it with one that calls for more cross-party partisan support in order to achieve victory (95% of R’s, 60% of I’s, 15%-20% of D’s).  The current partisan affiliation data is the clear death knell for the “base-style” campaigns favored by some in the early part of this decade.