Obamacare Approval Really Has Gone Up, Especially Among Democrats and Independents

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A month ago I took a look at Obamacare approval levels and wasn’t too impressed at the spike since Trump’s election. The increase was pretty small, and it was hard to tell if it was sustainable. So let’s take another look:

I don’t usually look at the “Less Smoothing” version of Pollster’s charts, but I’m doing it this time to try and get a sense of what’s been happening recently. This time, it really does look like there’s been a genuine change since Election Day, somewhere in the range of 5-6 points. Both Kaiser and Pew, which have conducted high-quality tracking polls for a long time, show the same thing. Pew breaks down the results by party, and it turns out the increase is due almost entirely to Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents:

In the past year, approval levels have increased 7 points among Democrats and 14 points among independents. Breaking this down further, approval has spiked a whopping 20 points among Democratic-leaning independents. By contrast Republican-leaning independents are up only slightly and Republicans haven’t budged even a single point.

In other words, now that Obamacare is under serious attacks, more lefties are finally deciding it’s worth defending after all. Finally.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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