Throughout the health care reform debate, pundits and partisans have often tried to boil down public opinion into simple and often contradictory assertions, as they have : Americans either "oppose the Affordable Care Act by comfortable margins" or are "deeply divided." Either they "want to get rid of it" or they want the government to "implement this law smartly" but not "start over."

For better or worse, the reality lies somewhere in between, and public support for the law can not easily be expressed by a single number.