A majority of voters see the GOP healthcare bill as a step backward and want to see the Senate make significant changes to it.

According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris Poll survey, provided exclusively to The Hill, 55 percent view the House-passed bill as a step backward, compared to 45 percent who described it as a step forward.



Satisfaction with the bill cut sharply along partisan lines.

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Seventy-seven percent of Republicans view the bill as a step forward, while 77 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents view it as a step back.

Fifty-seven percent of voters said they want to see the Senate make significant changes to the bill if it is to be passed into law, including 64 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of independents.



Sixty percent of voters want the Senate bill to ensure people with preexisting conditions can get affordable healthcare.



An amendment to the House bill offers state waivers that would allow carriers to charge people more based on their health.



“The voters want to neither go back to ObamaCare nor to the House bill,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn.

“The Senate is going to have to thread the needle here and craft a new compromise. The voters are mostly concerned with pre-existing conditions and are against any penalty for not having insurance. Solve the preconditions dilemma and they might have something that could get public support.”

The Harvard-Harris online survey of 2,006 registered voters was conducted May 17–20. The partisan breakdown is 36 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent and 3 percent other. The poll uses a methodology that doesn't produce a traditional margin of error.



The Harvard–Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard-Harris throughout 2017. Full poll results will be posted online later this week.