Over the past few years, it’s become fashionable among many political experts to deny that policy substance plays much of a role in motivating the electoral choices of the American public. The dominant picture of citizen behavior in contemporary accounts is that of a crude tribalism, in which individuals’ salient social or cultural identities motivate them to develop a simplistic but powerful affinity for a favored party—and an even stronger antipathy for the opposition—that subsequently determines their normative, and even factual, political beliefs. …
But a theory of voting behavior that stops there cannot account for every important development in politics today, and the apparent demise of Mitch McConnell’s health care bill in the Senate late Monday is one key example. There will no doubt be numerous inside-baseball reports and analyses about how and why the legislation has failed (at least so far) to attract the necessary support. But it’s also worth stepping back and looking at the big picture. The largest single obstacle that the Republican Party has faced in repealing the Affordable Care Act has been the policy preferences of the American people.
While the ACA itself proved to be a divisive measure, most of its specific provisions have consistently enjoyed strong popular support. CONT.
David A. Hopkins, Boston College