Sixty-one percent (61%) of U.S. voters say Congress should drop health care reform and focus on more immediate ways to improve the economy and create jobs.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% of voters nationwide disagree and think Congress should press ahead with health care.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) say given the country’s current economic situation, the Obama administration should wait on health care reform until the economy improves. That’s a 10-point increase from March of last year. Thirty-three percent (33%) still say the White House should move forward with health care reform.

Seventy percent (70%) of voters nationwide say the health care issue was important in the special Senate election in Massachusetts. That number includes 49% who say it was very important. Only 15% think the health care issue was not very or not at all important in the Tuesday election.

Election Night Polling conducted by Rasmussen Reports found that 56% of Massachusetts voters named health care as their top voting issue. However, Coakley won a slight majority of those voters. Overall, Massachusetts voters said deficit reduction was a higher priority than health care reform.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was apparently one of those who viewed health care as important in Republican Scott Brown’s upset Senate win in Massachusetts. Reid suggested on Wednesday that Congress shift its attention to the economy and job creation, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi countered that health care should still come first.

The health care issue is resonating to the Democrats’ disadvantage in a number of Senate races across the country, too. Political analyst Larry Sabato says if Senate elections were held right now, the Democrats’ 59-seat Senate majority would be reduced to 52.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of Republicans and 64% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties say Congress should focus on more immediate ways to improve the economy and create jobs.

Democrats are much more narrowly divided, although the plurality (49%) say the focus should remain on health care reform.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats say the Obama administration should keep pushing health care reform. Eighty-four percent (84%) of GOP voters and 63% of unaffiliateds think the White House should wait until the economy gets better.

Democrats continue to believe health care reform is the most important of President Obama’s budget priorities, but Republicans and unaffiliated voters say cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term should be the president’s top goal. Confidence among all voters that Obama will be able to achieve health care reform has fallen dramatically, but deficit reduction is still seen as the goal he is least likely to accomplish.

As is frequently the case, there is a sharp divide between the Political Class and Mainstream America. While 71% of the Political Class think Congress should stay focused on health care, 73% of Mainstream voters say it’s time for their national legislators to turn their attention to more immediate ways to improve the economy and create jobs.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of the Political Class say the Obama administration should move forward with health care reform despite the state of the economy. Seventy-one percent (71%) of Mainstream Americans say the administration should wait on health care until the economy improves.

But then the Political Class isn’t nearly as convinced as Mainstream voters that health care was an important issue in the Massachusetts election.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of all voters now rate the president’s handling of the health care issue as poor, while 32% say he has done a good or excellent job on the issue that has increasingly come to dominate the national political debate.

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