Last spring, Ryan unveiled his budget proposal, which proposed changing Medicare to a private program. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Polls: Ryan plan unpopular

Paul Ryan's a numbers guy — and he's got some bad ones.

Last spring when Ryan unveiled his budget proposal, which proposed changing Medicare to a private program with government subsidies, pollsters jumped to see what Americans thought.


A flurry of polls showed a majority or at least a plurality of voters didn't like Ryan's idea. Among the elderly, it was wildly unpopular.

In June 2011 a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey found that 58 percent of American adults opposed the Medicare idea, while just 35 percent said they supported. Among the elderly, the disapproval rate soared to 74 percent. Even among conservative voters, 54 percent disapproved.

In the same month, a Pew Research Center poll found that 41 percent of Americans opposed turning Medicare into a voucher system, akin to Ryan’s plan, although 23 percent had no opinion. That poll also found that a majority of older Americans, 51 percent, opposed the idea. When Pew drilled down, it found that voters preferred Democrats handling of Medicare over Republicans by 10 points — 44 to 34 percent.

Earlier in 2011, a New York Times/CBS poll found that 61 percent of Americans believed Medicare to be worth its cost, with just 29 percent disagreeing. Americans were divided over whether they’d be willing to cut Medicare, but seniors were dead-set against the idea, with 56 percent opposing reductions to the program.

One pocket of good news came out of a Gallup poll in April showed that Americans were only evenly divided on whether they preferred Ryan’s deficit-reduction plan or President Barack Obama’s. Still, two-thirds worried that Ryan’s plan would cut Medicare too much.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 11:18 a.m. on August 11, 2012.