Kaiser Health Poll Shows: 56% Of Midterm Voters Want Obamacare Repealed

Repeal ObamaCare

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza writes this morning, “A new Kaiser Family Foundation post-election poll suggests that a majority of people who voted on Nov. 2 favor repealing some or all of the health-care legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year. Fifty-six percent of midterm voters said they wanted to see some or all of the of the law repealed, a number that divided sharply along partisan lines. . . .”

It’s worth recalling that over the past two years, Kaiser Foundation polls have often had results showing the public much more favorable to Democrats’ massive health care law, compared to most other public polling. Yet today’s poll shows that among those voting last week, 49% have an unfavorable opinion of the health care bill, with 42% showing a favorable opinion. Intensity continues to be on the side of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ new law: 37% of voters have a “very unfavorable” opinion of the law, while only 20% have a “very favorable” opinion.

As with most other polls, today’s Kaiser poll shows barely a quarter of voters believe their families will be better off under the new law, while 40% say they will be worse off. Another 29% say it won’t make much difference. A plurality of voters, 44%, say the country as a whole will be worse off under the Democrats’ law, as opposed to 39% who say the country will be better off.

Importantly, a plurality of all those polled, 49%, say some or all of the Democrat health care bill should be repealed. Among voters, the number who say it should be repealed all or in part rises to 56%, including almost one in four Democrat voters. Among those who voted for Republicans, 54% say the bill should be repealed entirely.

Cillizza notes, “Republicans insist that health-care was a central piece of their successful argument that change was needed in Washington. That's a position that some Democratic observers also ascribe too, though few do so publicly. . . . Among the 17 percent [in the Kaiser poll] who said that health-care was a major influence on their vote, there was a strong GOP tilt; those voters picked a Republican candidate over a Democratic candidate by 15 points. And, within that same voting bloc, a whopping 56 percent said they had a ‘very unfavorable’ view of the health-care legislation. So, for those to whom health-care mattered, it was an overwhelmingly negative factor in their vote -- driving them to Republican candidates in hordes.”

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told CBS’ Bob Scheiffer Sunday, “This was a huge, huge issue in the election last Tuesday. A vast majority of Americans feel very, very uncomfortable with this new [health care] bill. People who supported us, political independents, want it repealed and replaced with something else. I think we owe it to them to try. Admittedly, it will be difficult with [President Obama] in the White House. But if we can put a full repeal on his desk and replace it with the kind of common-sense forms that we were advocating during the debate to reduce spending, we owe it to the American people to do that.”

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