Obamacare supporters were downright giddy last week after enrollment through the government’s insurance exchanges hit the 7 million mark. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found a full 49 percent of Americans willing to offer support for the law, up from a low of 39 percent in 2012. But pundits who argue that the rise of Obamacare’s polling numbers from catastrophic to merely mediocre will save Democrats at the ballot box this fall are sorely mistaken.
Although support for the Affordable Care Act has ticked upward, that support is far from even — and the demographics most critical to this year’s midterms continue to oppose the law. For example, 76 percent of Democrats support Obamacare, but only 44 percent of Independents say the same, and a 54 percent majority of Independents remain opposed. (As you’d expect, 78 percent of Republicans oppose the law.)
More importantly, a majority of whites (57 percent), people over 40 (51 percent), and people who make more than $50,000 (54 percent) continue to oppose the healthcare law. Regardless of the political climate, the midterm electorate is always older, whiter and wealthier than a presidential-year electorate. The politicians who voted for Obamacare can take comfort in knowing that just under half the country supports their policy, but unfortunately, those aren’t the people who will be showing up to the polls.
In fact, this fall’s electorate will look nothing like the ABC/Post poll, which has a sample of 1,017 adults. While polls of adults are useful for gauging societal and cultural trends, they’re irrelevant when measuring political attitudes. You can think of the electorate as a series of nesting dolls — adults, citizens, registered voters, presidential-year voters, and midterm voters — with each level progressively older and whiter. About 9 percent of adults are not citizens, less than 60 percent of eligible voters voted in the last presidential election, and a third of presidential voters don’t show up for midterms. In all, fewer than 40 percent of the “adults” ABC polled will cast a ballot in November — and all recent history suggests that the folks who support the law are the least likely to turn out.
Another method of predicting election turnout is voter intensity — people who feel strongly about issues are more likely to come out to vote. And the intensity effect is particularly strong during midterms. The last two were dominated by single issues — the Iraq War in 2006 and Obamacare in 2010 — and produced landslide victories for the side that intensely opposed the establishment’s policies.
Once again, this is bad news for Democrats. Last week, NPR found that the number of people who intensely oppose Obamacare is 12 percentage points higher than those who strongly support the law, 40 percent to 28 percent. Without a charismatic presidential candidate atop the ticket to drive turnout, Democrats should be seriously worried about disengaged Obamacare supporters sitting this one out.
Finally, although it’s nice to see national polling, this year’s elections won’t play out on the national stage. The battle for the U.S. Senate will be fought in seven critical states — Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia. Each of these states voted against President Obama in 2012, and on average, these states vote about 10 points more Republican than the country as a whole. Democrats won’t be competing this fall on an even playing field, but on one that tilts severely to the Right, and if Republicans can defend their home turf in six of these seven states, they’ll retake the Senate.
If the White House is tickled pink over the rare positive media coverage Obamacare is generating this week, it’s in for a nasty surprise in November. The 2014 midterms will be decided by a bloc of voters in deeply red states that skews older, whiter and wealthier than the national average — and these people remain just as fiercely opposed to the law as they’ve always been.
