From the avalanche of exit polling data coming out of Tuesday’s midterm elections, a couple of things are worth noting.
Asked “What should Congress do with the new health-care law?” 48 percent said “repeal it,” 16 percent said “leave it as it is” and 31 percent said “expand it.” That is, among an electorate that was more conservative and Republican-leaning than in 2008, as many people say they want to keep or expand the health care law as want to repeal it.
And as Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic writes:
The individual features of reform, like prohibitions on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or helping seniors pay for prescription drugs, remain wildly popular. When you tell people that repeal would mean giving up these features, as it necessarily would, support for repeal falls. In a recent CBS/New York Times poll (pdf), the proportion of respondents favoring repeal fell from 41 to 25 percent.
The point is, if the Republicans’ health care program is simply “Repeal Obamacare,” they are asking for political trouble with a capital T.
Asked who is to blame for the state of the economy, 34 percent of voters identified bankers, 29 percent Bush, and 24 percent Obama. And of those who blame bankers, Republicans hold an 11 point advantage.
As Jonathan Chait writes at The New Republic:
One of the GOP’s great political triumphs was to carry water for Wall Street in the financial regulation debate, raise enormous sums from Wall Street in return for doing so, and still win votes from people who blame Wall Street for the economy.
Now that the Republicans control one house of Congress, how long can they continue that particular high-wire act?
And here, in 5 minutes and 8 seconds, is why I get my election results exclusively from the Internet.
(Via Talking Points Memo)
Update: Writing at The Washington Post, Harold Meyerson has some more election stats to consider.