http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/politico-poll-shows-mounting-danger-for-dems-106814.html?hp=t1
POLITICO poll shows mounting danger for Dems
By ALEXANDER BURNS | 5/19/14 5:02 AM EDT
President Barack Obama’s job approval slump and voters’ entrenched wariness of his health care law are dogging Democrats ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, and Republicans have captured a lead in the areas home to the year’s most competitive races, according to a new POLITICO poll.
In the congressional districts and states where the 2014 elections will actually be decided, likely voters said they would prefer to vote for a Republican over a Democrat by 7 points, 41 percent to 34 percent. A quarter of voters said they were unsure of their preference.
Among these critical voters, Obama’s job approval is a perilous 40 percent, and nearly half say they favor outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Sixty percent say they believe the debate over the law is not over, compared with 39 percent who echo the president’s position and say the ACA debate has effectively concluded.
Both Obama’s job approval and the partisan ballot matchup are markedly more negative for Democrats in this poll than other national surveys — a reflection of the political reality that the midterm campaign is being fought on turf that is more challenging for Democrats than the nation as a whole.
The poll reveals that voters — even in the more conservative midterm states like Georgia and Arkansas, and tossup House districts in states such as Illinois, West Virginia and California — still lean in a liberal direction on several issues Democrats have championed this year, including immigration reform, pay equity for men and women and background checks for gun purchasers.
But none of those issues comes close to approaching health care as a major concern for midterm voters. Nearly nine in 10 respondents said that the health care law would be important to determining their vote, including 49 percent who said it would be very important.
By comparison, only 28 percent said that immigration reform was “very important” to determining their vote, and 16 percent who said the same of male-female income disparity.
Charles Pearre, a retired civil engineer in Virginia’s Prince William County, said his top priority for the midterms was “getting the government back on track where we have a Congress that can get something done.” But Pearre, a self-identified conservative, said he prefers a divided government and deeply distrusts the president.
“My opinion of the president is he’s not doing a good job at all and he’s not qualified,” said Pearre, who has not decided which party to vote for in the midterms. “The health care law, I think, should be totally revised.”
So far, the 2014 midterms have shaped up as an asymmetrical contest between Republicans campaigning broadly against the health care law and Obama as a national political brand, and Democrats emphasizing a host of locally tailored issues and a narrower message about economic fairness and gender equality. The Republican argument appears more bluntly powerful in many of the midterm races — GOP-trending states with competitive Senate races, for instance, like Louisiana and North Carolina — but it remains to be seen whether the same set of national issues will continue to dominate the six months between now and Election Day.
(Also on POLITICO: How the poll was conducted)
Among voters who had an opinion of the ACA, the electorate was almost exactly split between those who want to repeal the law entirely and those who favor either leaving it alone or keeping it in place with modifications.
Forty-eight percent of respondents endorsed repeal, versus 35 percent who wanted to modify the law without repealing it and just 16 percent who said it should be left unchanged.
The POLITICO poll, administered by SocialSphere Inc. and conducted by the research firm GfK, tested 867 likely voters in hotly contested areas. The poll was conducted online using GfK’s KnowledgePanel methodology, which is also employed by The Associated Press, from May 2 to 13. The poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
(Full poll results and cross tabs on Campaign Pro)
At the same time that the health care law is plainly a political anchor for Democrats, the poll signals that fully killing the ACA may not be a slam-dunk as a political proposition and could be a more complicated issue for a GOP presidential ticket to negotiate in 2016. While majorities of white voters (54 percent) and men (51 percent) support repealing Obamacare, repeal now falls short of majority support with most subgroups.
Among independent voters, a majority favor either keeping the law with modifications (45 percent) or leaving it intact entirely (11 percent), with 42 percent supporting repeal. Among self-described moderates, 50 percent say the law should be left in place but modified.
The law receives powerful support from minority voters, including 80 percent of African-Americans who want to leave the law alone (34 percent) or modify it (46 percent), and 55 percent of Hispanics who want it left entirely intact (22 percent) or only modified (33 percent).
