A new poll of California voters found a 17-point lead among those who say they will vote to reelect their congressional representatives who voted for health-care reform — including 34 House members and Sen. Barbara Boxer (Sen. Dianne Feinstein voted for reform but is not up reelection this year) — over voters who say they’ll vote against the reformers:

By a margin of 46 percent to 29 percent, California voters surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for a politician who had supported the health bill. And just over half the voters polled said they believed the country would be better off because of the bill…

On the health bill, 35 percent of those polled said that if their senator or U.S. representative had voted for the legislation, they would be “much more likely” to support them in November. Eleven percent said they would be “somewhat more likely” to vote that way.

On the other side, 20 percent said they would be “much less likely” and 9 percent said “somewhat less likely” to support that lawmaker. Nineteen percent said the health vote would have no effect on their support, and 5 percent said they did not know.

Other polls show the new law gradually becoming more popular as people learn what’s actually in the bill. Bills generally become more popular after they become law, but the reform law has been demogogued by Republicans more than most, and they have not let up in the weeks since it passed.

The GOP could be facing a day of reckoning if and when independent voters realize that Republicans have deliberately deceived them. The GOP’s tea-bagger base, who only get their “news” from propaganda sources like Fox and Limbaugh, will be shielded from the truth, but it is (much) more than likely that independent voters, who get information from legitimate media as well as Fox, will learn soon enough the none of the GOP spin — that the bill would create death panels, lead to rationing, constitute a government takeover, put government bureacrats between patients and doctors, cover illegal aliens, use taxpayer funds to pay for abortions and the rest — has ever had any basis in reality.

It doesn’t help the GOP that independent voters are much more likely to be uninsured than Republicans or Democrats.

Californians like to think of themselves as trendsetters. If there is a trend toward greater approval of reforms — and it is way too early to know if so — the outcome for Republicans in November could be very different than the rout of the Democrats they are predicting today.