Poll: Most Democrats want presidential candidate who would build on ObamaCare

A majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would prefer to vote for a presidential candidate who wants to build on ObamaCare rather than replace it with “Medicare for All,” according to a survey released Thursday. 

The Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 40 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents prefer to vote for presidential candidates who would replace ObamaCare with “Medicare for All,” while 55 percent said they prefer to support candidates who would build on ObamaCare.

{mosads}And of the 40 percent who said they prefer to vote for a Medicare for All supporter, only 14 percent said they would only vote for such a candidate. 

The issue is all but certain to come up in the Democratic Party’s presidential debate Thursday night, with front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden in favor of building on ObamaCare, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) supporting Medicare for All, which would replace all private insurance with a single plan run by the government.

The poll showed 69 percent of the public supports a public option — a proposal similar to Biden’s that would add a government-sponsored plan to compete with private insurance. 

Medicare for All has the support of 53 percent of the public, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation poll. 

That is about the same level of support for both plans seen in the organization’s July poll.  

The latest survey, conducted from Sept. 3 to 8, involved 524 Democratic and Democratic-leaning U.S. adults. For questions involving that group, it had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

—Updated at 12:27 p.m.