It’s often said that reforming the U.S. health care system amounts to reshaping one-fifth of the economy. It’d follow, then, that voters would hold the GOP’s grotesquely unpopular health bills against its reputation on economic issues. But historic polling shows that the public doesn’t relate the two—and still today, it favors Republicans over Democrats on the economy by a significant margin.
Even before this year, when Washington’s majority party introduced two pieces of health legislation whose favorability registered in the teens, Americans trusted Democrats much more than the GOP on health care policy. This includes the years of Obamacare implementation, glitches and all (all survey data via the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll):
The gulf between the two parties narrowed to a strait in 2013, when galvanized congressional Republicans engaged in mostly vain but relentless work to pick apart the Affordable Care Act. That all changed this year: As of June, Democrats now enjoy the widest advantage they’ve held over their rival party on health care during the Obamacare era. The House and Senate GOP have put forth bills, the American Health Care Act and the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which have been poorly received thanks both to scary-sounding Congressional Budget Office estimates and the attempt to appease both moderates and conservatives. (The proposals instead have ticked off both, giving the legislation no base of support). Amid all this, the current health care law has become more popular—for the first time in its existence, it achieved sustained plurality of support in 2017.
There are political reasons why this would be perilous for Republicans. They’ve justified their electoral existence for more than a half-decade by saying they would dismantle Obamacare. Now they finally have the Oval Office and control both chambers of Congress. Yet they’re having an awful time following through.
A subtler drawback could be that the GOP becomes less trustworthy with handling the economy. The health care system’s immense size and tangible effect on an individual’s finances places the matter at the very center of economic policy. But voters still prefer Republicans to Democrats on the broader question.
The spread in 2017 hasn’t changed all that much from years past: It was steadily around 10 points before the 2014 midterm elections, and the GOP’s rating is as high now as it was then. There does seem to be a rough correlation between voter trust of Republicans on the economy and health care, but it doesn’t look like the latter drives the former.
When the GOP has been most favored on economic matters, it’s seen an uptick in support for its health care agenda, too. Yet between 2011 and 2012, for example, the economic measure jumped six points, and the health care measure just two.
“There is a huge difference in how voters think about the economy and health care. They do not relate them together when they think about who’s best to handle them,” said Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, one of the firms behind the NBC News/WSJ poll. Many issues are “wrapped in” to individuals’ economic evaluation: taxes, jobs, wages, business growth, and even something less direct like regulation, for instance. More homeowners now believethat their houses will appreciate than they did at any point in the last decade. Americans’ confidence in the stock market is at a 10-year high, too. Their optimism about wage growth is ticking up. And their faith in the overall economy is humming, particularly among Republicans and independents. More GOP voters credit President Trump with improving the economy now than Democrats credited President Obama in 2014, 73 percent to 69 percent. And 54 percent of independents say the economy has improved during the Trump administration. Two-thirds of them credit Trump himself.
Health care could turn into a doomful liability for Republicans the next year. But it’s not sinking their potential to make inroads with voters and solidify their base on other economic matters, including taxes, on which they possess the same margin of support over Democrats they did in 2014. They still face potential perils elsewhere: Voters are still bearish on the GOP’s ability to help the middle class, and where Republicans once had wide advantages on security issues like immigration and foreign policy, they now lag their opponents by six points and one point, respectively. Predicting how Trump will play district by district and state by state a year from now is a guess.
What isn’t: The public—and Republicans especially—still trusts the GOP to deliver on the economy, even if it’s botched a major economic matter out of the gate.
