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While many Republican strategists and conservative pundits struggled to make sense of how a Democrat could have been so successful in Pennsylvania’s 18th district on Tuesday, voters sent a clear message: Health care is a priority.
Election night exit polling by Public Policy Polling found that among PA-18 voters who said health care was the most important issue, Democrat Conor Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone by a margin of 64 to 36. Saccone’s support of the Republican health care agenda — namely, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — made 41 percent of voters less likely to vote for him. Fifty-three percent of voters disapproved of GOP efforts to repeal the health care law and 48 percent believed Republicans are trying to sabotage the law since they failed to repeal it.
These numbers are all the more surprising given the fact that PA-18 is a Republican district that gave Donald Trump a 20-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But as Forbes’ Bruce Japsen previously reported, health care is especially important in Western Pennsylvania. Although health care premiums have risen (a rise which officials in Pennsylvania attribute to Trump’s “refusal to make cost-sharing reduction payments for 2018”), the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) — the region’s largest non-governmental employer — has grown substantially under the ACA.
https://thinkprogress.org/pennsylvania-voters-say-health-care-is-top-priority-704c7fcf0783/
Election night exit polling by Public Policy Polling found that among PA-18 voters who said health care was the most important issue, Democrat Conor Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone by a margin of 64 to 36. Saccone’s support of the Republican health care agenda — namely, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — made 41 percent of voters less likely to vote for him. Fifty-three percent of voters disapproved of GOP efforts to repeal the health care law and 48 percent believed Republicans are trying to sabotage the law since they failed to repeal it.
These numbers are all the more surprising given the fact that PA-18 is a Republican district that gave Donald Trump a 20-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But as Forbes’ Bruce Japsen previously reported, health care is especially important in Western Pennsylvania. Although health care premiums have risen (a rise which officials in Pennsylvania attribute to Trump’s “refusal to make cost-sharing reduction payments for 2018”), the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) — the region’s largest non-governmental employer — has grown substantially under the ACA.
https://thinkprogress.org/pennsylvania-voters-say-health-care-is-top-priority-704c7fcf0783/
