No Game Changer

President Obama's health reform speech last week wasn't the game changer he needed, a new public opinion poll shows.

Americans are divided—48 percent approve of the way he's handling the issue and the same percent disapprove, an ABC News/Washington Post poll of 1,001 Americans shows. The results were about the same as a poll taken last month prior to the president's address.

Even worse, 54 percent of those polled say the more they hear about reform, the less they like it. If the so-called public-option plan to cover the uninsured is dropped, the president picks up a little support, the poll found. The public option is dead politically, but President Obama hasn't fully acknowledged its demise.

One positive: It's the first poll taken by ABC News/Washington Post since April in which the president didn't lose support for his handling of health reform.

A Rasmussen Reports poll shows the president got at least a short-term bounce from his speech. Rasmussen, which now releases daily polls, says today that 51 percent of those surveyed support the president reform versus 44 percent just before the speech. The increase in support is up only 1 percent since the end of June.

Similarly, a CBS News poll last week shows a 12-percentage-point bump in the number of people who think Obama is doing a good job handling health reform, compared with a week earlier. CBS conducted interviews with the same participants, interviewing them just before and after Obama's speech.

Of course, as poll watcher and analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com observes, there should be plenty of additional data out later this week, and that will provide a more clear picture of the influence of the president's address.