The same poll found 43% of respondents “strongly” oppose the Republican plan. How many “strongly” support it? A whopping 6%. That’s not a typo.A forgiving observer may look for ways to excuse results like these. One might note, for example, that the Affordable Care Act has long been controversial, too. Perhaps one might also argue that Americans would have more favorable impressions of the GOP plan if they had more time to familiarize themselves with the details.But the excuses don’t work in this case. The Republican legislation is far less popular than the ACA was – and also less popular than the Clinton plan from the 1990s. What’s more, if GOP leaders had any confidence that the public would like their plan once Americans got to know it they wouldn’t be rushing to force it through Congress so quickly.Not to put too fine a point on this, but it’s political suicide to rally behind a life-or-death piece of legislation, which would leave tens of millions of people without health coverage, knowing it enjoys the support of just 17% of the public.Maybe, some of you are thinking, Republicans don’t care what the American mainstream thinks. So long as core members of the GOP base like their health care legislation, that’s good enough for the majority party.Except that’s wrong, too. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent looked through the Quinnipiac poll’s internals and found that whites without college degrees, white men, middle-aged, and older voters – key constituencies behind Trump’s victory – all oppose the Republican plan.Imagine being an on-the-fence House Republican and seeing the results of this poll. With your career on the line, and the lives of many of your constituents at stake, do you walk the plank because Donald Trump and Paul Ryan asked you to?I guess we’ll find out soon enough.Postscript: It’s worth noting for context that all of the recent polling on the GOP bill don’t reflect ongoing negotiations to move the legislation even further to the right. There’s room, in other words, to turn this bill into something the public would hate even more.