Conducted by SurveyUSA for Firedoglake, 01/17/2010 – 01/20/2010.

600 likely voters from Indiana’s 9th Congressional District were interviewed by SurveyUSA 01/17/10 through 01/19/10, using Registration Based Sample (RBS) from Aristotle in Washington DC. A likely voter is defined as someone whose household voted in both 2006 and 2008 elections. Incumbent Democrat Baron Hill was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1998; in 2004, Hill lost the seat to Republican Mike Sodrel. Hill re-took the seat from Sodrel in 2006 and defeated Sodrel again in 2008. All interviews for this survey were completed before the results of the 01/19/10 US Senate MA special election were known.

» Click here to see the results via SurveyUSA

1. Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as President?

2. If there were an election of US House of Representatives today, and the only two candidates on the ballot were Democrat Baron Hill and Republican Mike Sodrel, who would you vote for?

3. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the quality of the health care you receive?

4. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with what you have to pay when you need health care?

5. There are many pieces to the health care reform bill that is being considered by Congress. One change, called the individual mandate, would require every American to carry health insurance, whether they want insurance or not. Are you familiar with the individual mandate?

6. Is it a good idea or a bad idea to require Americans to carry health insurance?

7. Under one proposal, if a person does not carry health insurance from a private insurance company, they would be fined up to 2% of their income. Is this fair, or unfair?

8. Thinking about the proposal that requires everyone to either carry private health insurance or be fined, are you strongly in favor, somewhat in favor, somewhat opposed or strongly opposed?

9. If the bill required individuals to have health insurance, but gave them the choice of buying health insurance from a private company, OR buying into the government run Medicare program … would you be strongly in favor, somewhat in favor, somewhat opposed, or strongly opposed?

10. If the bill did not require people to buy health insurance, but instead, increased the payroll tax to provide everyone with basic government run health insurance through Medicare … would you be strongly in favor, somewhat in favor, somewhat opposed, or strongly opposed?

11. Would you prefer Representative Baron hill to vote… for the bill that would fine those individuals who do not carry health insurnace, for a version that does not fine individuals, or against any health care bill?

12. If Baron Hill votes to pass a health care bill that would fine those individuals who do not carry private health insurance, does your opinion of Hill go up, down, or stay the same?

13. If Baron Hill votes to pass a health care bill that would fine those individuals who do not carry private health insurance and in return brings additional federal money to Indiana’s 9th congressional district, does your opinion of Hill go up, down, or stay the same?

2. Assume Baron Hill votes to pass a version of the health care bill that does NOT include a fine. If there were an election for US House of Representatives and the only two candidates on the ballot were Democrat Baron Hill and Republican Mike Sodrel, who would you vote for?

** Too few respondents of this type were interviewed for this data to be meaningful.

Statement of Methodology

How this poll was conducted: This SurveyUSA poll was conducted by telephone in the voice of a professional announcer. Respondent households were selected at random, using Random Digit Dialed (RDD) sample provided by Survey Sampling, of Fairfield CT, unless otherwise indicated on the individual poll report. All respondents heard the questions asked identically. Within the report, you will find: the geography that was surveyed; the date(s) interviews were conducted and the news organization(s) that paid for the research. The number of respondents who answered each question and the margin of sampling error for each question are provided. Where necessary, responses were weighted according to age, gender, ethnic origin, geographical area and number of adults and number of voice telephone lines in the household, so that the sample would reflect the actual demographic proportions in the population, using most recent U.S.Census estimates. In theory, with the stated sample size, one can say with 95% certainty that the results would not vary by more than the stated margin of sampling error, in one direction or the other, had the entire universe of respondents been interviewed with complete accuracy. There are other possible sources of error in all surveys that may be more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. These include refusals to be interviewed, question wording and question order, weighting by demographic control data and the manner in which respondents are filtered (such as, determining who is a likely voter). It is difficult to quantify the errors that may result from these factors. Fieldwork for this survey was done by SurveyUSA of Clifton, NJ.