Obamacare's Electoral Consequences

Andrew Stiles reports:

Democratic support for President Obama’s controversial health care overhaul may have single-handedly caused the party’s historic “shellacking” in the 2010 mid-term elections, a new study finds.

The study was conducted by a group of political science professors and published this week by American Politics Research. It found that, had it not been for the health care law, House Democrats likely would have held at least 25 seats and maintained their majority.

House Democrats lost 63 seats in 2010, giving Republicans their largest Congressional majority since World War II.

It was an outcome few predicted. The study notes that the median academic forecast of net Democratic losses before the election was just 44 seats. 

It has remained unpopular since. And it is one of the reasons it makes sense to run on repealing Obamacare. "A recent USA Today/Gallup poll of swing-state voters and a recent Quinnipiac poll of voters from coast-to-coast both show respondents favoring Obamacare’s repeal by a margin of 13 points," as Jeff Anderson noted. "Perhaps the Republican party, and particularly the eventual Republican presidential nominee, should run on repeal."