Obamacare Makes The President Sick

The Wall Street Journal, has been assessing the after-effects of the forced passage of the health care reform act, and it appears that opposition is about where it was at the time of passage, and perhaps beginning to stiffen a bit. The Democratic strategy has gone awry. The plan was to ram health care through, then run on it after people decided that they actually loved it. Not gonna happen.

Along with The Journal, YouGov (where I happily and regularly answer their polling questions) and Pollster have come up with results that indicate that opposition to the bill has not softened in the slightest, and that people who oppose it will be voting in larger numbers than those who favored it. Along with the usual party-in-power letdown during mid-term elections, this may very well be fatal to the Democratic majority, and a seriously crippling illness for the President.

The polls that overlapped included eleven states which are expected to be competitive in November. They are, in alphabetical order, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Both the health reform bill and the Democrats who voted for it (particularly the last-minute anti-abortion Democrats) fared rather badly. The polls were taken first in January, then repeated with identical questions to the same respondents in late May.

Nothing much changed between January and May in overall opposition among all categories of voters. Opposition to the health care reforms remained at about the same level, but many of the respondents were more emphatic about voting against the people who passed it than they were about the bill in the first place. In all eleven states, the opposition exceeded those who favored it. Needless to say, the margin was closer in blue/liberal states than in red/conservative states.

In January, in liberal states such as Connecticut, opposition was at 55% to 45%. In conservative states like Louisiana, the opposition was at 63% to 37%. In the true battleground states such as Colorado and Ohio, the ratio was 58% opposed, 42% in favor. In big liberal states such as California, Illinois and New York, the reforms actually gained some support, but none were considered swing states, and Democrats are expected to do fairly well there. By May, opposition in liberal Connecticut had dropped to 50%, but in conservative Louisiana, opposition increased to 64%.

It's the wobblers, the battleground states where the numbers will be most significant if there is going to be a shakeup in Congress. Colorado's opposition dropped only by two percentage points, and in Ohio by a mere one percent. This is where not only preference, but determination to win and undo the reforms becomes the deciding factor. In both January and May, the polls carefully controlled for party identification, self-identification of political philosophy, 2008 vote for the presidency versus their current feelings toward Obama, and the usual demographic considerations of age, gender, race, income, education, state of residence, and personal status in the health insurance market.

Both polls showed that health care reform had a significant impact on votes for and against the Democratic candidates who were running. Those in opposition to the Obama health care reforms were 20 percent more likely to vote for the Republican than the Democrat in the Senate races. The Senate differential in May remained static, but the House race changes radically. In January, the anti-reform Republican had a 24% better chance of winning than a Democrat. After the hustling, bribing, and parliamentary tricks which snuck the reforms through, by May the Republican opponent of reform has moved up to 44% more likely to win. The result is that for the first time since the 1994 "Republican revolution," the Republicans lead in the generic ballot. The question was asked identically in both polls: "If the 2010 election for the House of Representatives were held today, would you vote Democratic or Republican?"

In those battleground states, Democrats have not changed their minds about voting for a fellow Democrat, nor have Republicans changed their minds about voting for their fellow Republicans. It is now the independents who will likely make the final decision. Opposition to or support for the health care reforms doesn't change the minds of either voting Democrats or voting Republicans. But if Obama and the Democratic candidates can convince independents that the reform was a good thing, and other issues have little or no effect, then Democrats can win in Colorado among independents by as much as 56% to 44%. In Ohio it would put the Democrats behind, but only by 52% to 48% rather than the January 57% to 43%.

So far, the Democrats have been unable to move those statistics among independents. The independents remain essentially static from January to May, and Democratic propaganda has had little or no effect on their voting attitude. Even after passage, Obamacare still plays a major role in the future voting decisions of independents, meaning the Democrats are facing a serious round of shoveling stuff against the tide. If Obama's inability to energize voters other than his base continues, he could be facing at least one Republican house of Congress after the November elections. Possibly even two.