Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Partisanship and Health Care Concerns

Hillary Clinton's health care plan announcement was big news this week and based on the recent national survey sponsored by CCPS, it should be. We asked respondents how important health care issues would be when considering who to support in the 2008 Presidential election. 19% of our sample said that it would be one of the two most important issues and an additional 45% said it would be very important. But what is even more important for Clinton is that Democrats, whose votes she needs to win to get the nomination, are much more concerned about the issue than Republicans. The question about the importance of this issue breaks down as follows:
While only one in ten Republicans said that the issue would be one of the two most important to their 2008 vote, about one in four Democrats said the same. In fact, combining the two categories, fewer than half of Republican respondents even listed the issue as at least very important, while nearly 85% of Democrats said the issue was at least very important to them.

The bottom line? You may not need a health care plan to win the Republican nomination, but it certainly seems important to Democratic voters.

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