The most interesting number of the day is 61 percent

By Jaime Fuller,

What do Americans think we should do with the Affordable Care Act? Right now, it’s hard to tell. They are giving out some serious mixed messages.

In the latest CNN/ORC International poll, released Sunday, 61 percent of respondents said they wanted to leave the law as is, or make some changes. Thirty-eight percent said they wanted to repeal the law and replace it with a new system, or go back to the old days before Obamacare. That sounds like people are warming up to the law, or at least afraid of doing anything drastic to change the current status of health care in America.

Why is that 61 percent so interesting? Because other recent polls have painted different portraits of public opinion on the Affordable Care Act.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll from April 29 showed that 48 percent of Americans disapprove of the health care law. (the mark of a useful poll about the Affordable Care Act is not referring to the law by its name or nickname. Otherwise, you’re mostly just testing for partisanship.) Forty-four percent of Americans said the country’s health-care system was getting worse because of the recent legislative changes.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from the end of April also showed that people were unimpressed by the Obamacare rollout — even though many Americans were also aware that more than 8 million people signed up for insurance under the law.

In the same week, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released a poll that showed 46 percent of Americans that the Affordable Care Act was a bad idea. Thirty-six percent said the law was a good idea. However, this poll does label the Affordable Care Act as “Barack Obama’s health care plan.”

Forty-nine percent of respondents said the health-care law needed a major overhaul or to be completely eliminated, while 48 percent said it was working fine or needed minor changes.

However, there was other public polling evidence that seemed to corroborate CNN’s findings. Although the KFF respondents were underwhelmed by Obamacare so far, they also wanted Congress to fix it, rather than repeal it.

More From The Washington Post: