The Washington Post and ABC News have a new poll out today showing that a clear majority of Americans support a public health insurance option -- 57 percent, compared to just 40 percent who oppose it.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can't be fooled by flimsy things like statistics.

Appearing on CNBC this afternoon, McConnell said of the poll:

My guess is the only reason that survey had the kind of results you're talking about is they probably described it in a way that made it appealing to the respondent. But if you ask people if they think it's a good idea for the government to be in the insurance business, my guess is it would be no better than 50-50 -- in other words, not exactly something that was widely accepted.

It seemed like this might be a fair point. After all, sometimes poll questions are leading -- or misleading. So we went back and checked. Here's the question that was asked:

Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?

That sounds a lot like the question McConnell predicted would create a 50-50 split -- rather than the 57-40 split it actually resulted in.

Here's the video.