Significant pluralities of American voters, and Democrats specifically, want the Democratic Party to prioritize health care if they retake the White House and Congress in 2021:
Poll: voters want Democrats to focus on health care if they win in 2020
Guns come in second, and climate change is far behind.
Dylan Matthews was a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.
Out of all likely voters, 31 percent said they would want Democrats to focus on health care. Guns were the second most cited issue, at 15 percent, followed by immigration (14 percent), deficit reduction (11 percent), and climate change (only 6 percent).
Looking just at self-identified Democrats, the numbers are strikingly similar, with answers more concentrated around health care and guns:
The polling here was conducted by Civis Analytics, a data science and polling firm formed by veterans of the 2012 Obama campaign, and its senior data scientist, David Shor. Civis conducts polling online; the question asked here reached 921 likely voters on Wednesday, February 28.
The Democratic establishment in Washington, DC, has spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to formulate a new approach to health care reform, due in no small part to the Affordable Care Act’s perceived failings: high premiums, flagging individual insurance markets, a lack of coverage for poor Americans in red states that decline to expand Medicaid. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) single-payer, Medicare-for-all bill counts potential 2020 contenders Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker as co-sponsors, and the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank with close ties to the Democratic Party, has proposed an all-but-single-payer plan that would radically expand Medicare-style coverage.
But it’s not obvious that this is the best use of Democrats’ political capital should they retake power in Washington. In 2009, the last time Democrats were in power, they accomplished an awful lot — including a stimulus package that contained major green energy and education investments, the Affordable Care Act, and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — but failed at some other priorities, like a cap-and-trade bill to tackle climate change or comprehensive immigration reform giving unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship. So far, Republicans have managed to use united control of government to pass tax cuts and to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, but have failed to do anything more on health care or immigration or welfare reform.
So it’s reasonable to ask whether Democrats, if they win the White House and Congress in 2020 (or 2024) and have two years to pass meaningful legislation before they inevitably lose control of Congress in the midterms, should focus on expanding health coverage or pivot instead to immigration, or try to prevent climate apocalypse, or make DC and Puerto Rico states, or end gerrymandering and expand voting rights, or finally take action on gun control.
But Democratic voters, and voters in general, seem very clear in their preference that health care come first. Civis allowed respondents to offer open-ended responses to the question, and found that even some self-described conservative Republicans wanted Democrats to focus on health care. One self-described “somewhat liberal” independent surveyed called for “Healthcare for all with complete coverage including eye care and dental,” while an independent moderate answered “Healthcare ... why are we making cuts when there is a greater need.”
While some Republicans chose health care, as a whole, self-described Republicans were likelier to pick immigration (26 percent) and deficit reduction (19 percent) as important issues to address than they were health care (18 percent). Generally speaking, the more conservative the likely voter surveyed (regardless of party), the likelier they were to focus on immigration and deficit reduction, and the more liberal they got, the likelier they were to choose health care (and, secondarily, guns and climate change):
Among very liberal respondents, as many (17 percent) want to tackle climate change as guns, but both lag far behind health care. Only 6 and 8 percent of very and somewhat liberal respondents, respectively, want to focus on immigration, in a sign that there could be less grassroots interest in a pro-immigrant reform bill than in a conservative hardline bill on the issue.
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