Right wing website Newsmax's weird poll results: taxes no, Medicare yes
Right wing website Newsmax held a poll in which they asked people how to reduce the deficit.
Below are the results (copied from here):
To close the federal deficit, Congress and the President should:
| Raise taxes | Â 85,099( 08%) |
| Cut spending | 274,206( 27%) |
| Cut taxes and cut spending | 593,479( 59%) |
| Raise taxes and increase spending | 38,066( 03%) |
Do you favor significant cuts to Medicare?
| Yes, cut Medicare significantly | 91,174( 09%) |
| No, don’t cut Medicare significantly | 894,105( 90%) |
Read more on Newsmax.com: SurveyResults. [Note from 2012/11/13: the Newsmax webpage no longer show the results above concerning Medicare. But I found other webpages which mentioned the result: here and here and here, for example. This suggests that Newmax removed the results because they didn’t like them. Instead, now they present the (counterfactual) question “Should Congress restore $500 billion in Medicare benefits for seniors that the Obama plan cut?”, for which 68% of respondents (961,924) said “Yes, restore the Medicare benefits.” Americans love Medicare.   See also Newsmax Uses Poll to Spread Lies.]
What’s significant is that that 86% of respondents (over 3/4 million people) wanted to lower the federal deficit by cutting taxes and/or spending and yet 90% of respondents (almost 900,000 people) oppose significant cuts to Medicare.
Also, 67% of respondents (965,774) said “No, don’t repeal it all to” in response to “Do you support the full repeal of President Obama’s healthcare plan Congress passed in 2010?”.