For all the buzz about Obamacare being a major issue in 2014, the health care law may not have much of an impact on the election, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday.
The survey found that overall, supporting Obamacare is unlikely to hurt a candidate: 34 percent of adults surveyed said they’d be “more likely to vote for” a candidate who supports the health care law, while 36 percent said they’d be “less likely to vote for” such a candidate. Twenty-seven percent said it wouldn’t make much of a difference, and three percent had no opinion.
In other words, the upcoming mid-terms won’t be like 2010, an election in which supporting Obamacare damaged Democratic candidates across the board. Where Obamacare may matter on the margins in 2014, political scientists say, is in red-state Senate races featuring Democratic incumbents who haven’t faced voters since the health care law was enacted in March of 2010.
All in all, Republicans have an advantage in the mid-term elections.
The Post-ABC poll, conducted last Thursday to Sunday, surveyed a random national sample of 1,002 adults on land lines and cellphones and has a margin or error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
[Via Washington Post’s Greg Sargent]
