It’s not health care, stupid, it’s the economy.
Despite the Republicans’ reading of the midterm elections as a call to arms to repeal or roll back the new health care law, a poll released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggested people were not thinking first and foremost about health care when they cast their vote last week.
In contrast to exit polls taken after the election, Kaiser asked voters to explain why they voted the way they did and what factors influenced their decision. While voters cited a variety of factors, ranging from the economy and jobs to voting against a candidate from a specific party, health care ranked fourth on list, with 17 percent citing health care or reform as one of the top factors in how they cast their vote.
Those exit polls also indicated the economy, by far, played a critical role in the election, according to a story last week by our colleagues on the results.
Which is not to say health care was a plus for those Democratic candidates who supported the legislation. “To the extent people were thinking about health reform at the voting booth, it appears the law’s opponents had an advantage over its supporters,” according to the Kaiser analysis. Nearly six of 10 people who said health reform was one of the factors determining their vote also said they supported a Republican candidate for Congress.
The poll also found significant disagreement over how to change the new law, with about 40 percent of the public wanting to expand or leave the law as it is and about half wanting to repeal all or some of the legislation.
And there’s still significant confusion around the new law, according to Kaiser, with about half the public acknowledging confusion.
The Kaiser survey was conducted Nov. 3 through Nov. 6 among 1,502 adults, including 1,017 people who said they voted in the midterm elections. The margin of sampling error for the total sample and sample of voters is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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