Republican pollster Chris Wilson said Wednesday that Democrats were smart not to run on ObamaCare as a whole in the 2018 midterm elections, instead focusing on pieces of former President Obama’s landmark health care law.
“I think with ObamaCare, that as a term, has almost become pejorative in its descriptive manners, and you have a visceral reaction from a lot of Americans when they hear the term,” Wilson, chief strategist at WPA Intelligence, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball on “What America’s Thinking.”
“If you break it down by individual aspects, the private insurance aspect, the fact that it covers pre-existing conditions, there are parts of that that are very popular,” he continued.
“I think that’s why Democrats were smart in the 2018 election to not run on ObamaCare per se, but to run on the individual parts, and programs that will make it up,” he said.
Republicans in Congress have vowed for years to repeal and replace the law, also known as the Affordable Care Act, but polling around last year’s midterms showed that ObamaCare remained popular with most voters.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late October of last year found that 60 percent of likely voters wanted ObamaCare to remain in place.
— Julia Manchester
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