In places where the uninsured rate plummeted this year, Republicans still scored big electoral victories.
Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia — states that saw substantial drops in the proportion of their residents without insurance — all elected Republican Senate candidates who oppose the Affordable Care Act. Control of the West Virginia state House of Delegates flipped from Democrats to Republicans. And Arkansas elected Republican supermajorities to both houses of its legislature along with a Republican governor, a situation that could imperil the Medicaid expansion that helped more than 200,000 of its poorest residents get health insurance.
That places that benefited most from the law still supported politicians who oppose it should not be a surprise. Republicans were the favorites in many of these races, and polling has shown that health reform had faded as a decisive issue for many voters. Counties that showed the biggest gains in insurance coverage were more likely to be strongly Republican-leaning than Democratic based on their 2012 presidential votes, according to an Upshot analysis of data from Enroll America and Civis Analytics. That pattern appears to have held.
My colleague Abby Goodnough reported from Kentucky in September and found people who were pleased by their new coverage under the law remained unhappy with the Democrats who passed it.
“Born and raised Republican,” Robin Evans, an eBay warehouse packer who was grateful for new Medicaid coverage, said of herself. “I ain’t planning on changing now.”
Interactive Feature
Obama’s Health Law: Who Was Helped Most
A new data set provides a clearer picture of which people gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
