Is defunding Obamacare what Republican voters want?
The House of Representatives voted Friday 230-189 to pass a bill that would keep the government running -- and which also would defund Obamacare. So in the effort to block the Obamacare rollout, are House Republicans doing what their voters sent them to Washington to do?
Sort of; they're doing what some of their voters wanted. The conservatives, yes, for the most part. The moderates and independents, not so much.
This is the exit poll breakout of everyone who voted for a Republican House candidate, and what those same voters wanted to happen to the Affordable Care Act. Forty-seven percent of Republican House voters wanted full repeal. Over a third wanted only some of it repealed.
Importantly, there were differences among the voters who cast ballots for Republicans.
Their conservative base (who comprised 60 percent of all their voters) wanted full repeal, though almost three in 10 conservatives said repeal only some. Republicans' moderate voters (a smaller third of their coalition) was much more inclined to call for partial repeal.
And the independents who backed Republican House candidates in 2012 didn't want full repeal, either. Most of their independents would have left it, or repealed only some. The partisan identifiers who backed GOP candidates were, not surprisingly, more for full repeal.
(*It didn't ask about defunding, specifically, as a method ... but you get the idea.)
