Yesterday I began an investigation into whether the final House vote on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka the Health Care Reform Bill) had a measurable impact on incumbents who lost their seats. Specifically, whether a Congressperson who voted for the bill got defeated by more, on average, than a Congressperson who voted against the bill.
The results of the simple analysis I did showed the opposite. When you take the winner's percentage of the vote and subtract off the loser's percentage, I showed in yesterday's diary that
... the size of the average loss for those who voted for health care reform was actually 1.05% less, at 7.95%, than the magnitude of the defeat for those who chose to vote against health care reform, at 9.00%.
Last night I decided to do a further analysis to look at how losing Congresspeople fared relative to their performance in 2008. That is, did a Congressperson who voted for the health care bill lose, on average, more vote share than a Congressperson who voted against it?
There were a total of fifty Democratic incumbents who lost in 2010 and who had an opponent in 2008 (two ran unopposed in 2008 so I removed them from consideration). Of those fifty, thirty-four voted for the health care bill and sixteen voted against it. Were their affirmative health care votes detrimental to their vote totals in 2010 compared to 2008?
The answer again is NO. The average losing Democratic incumbent lost by 12.0%. The average losing Democratic incumbent who voted for health reform lost by 11.5%, while those who voted against health care reform lost by an average of 13.3%. Not a huge gap to be sure, but in fact the effect goes the other way. Losing Congresspeople who voted for the PPACA fared better than their colleagues who voted against.
These results don't mean that we can conclude that health care reform didn't hurt Democrats in general. Perhaps everyone's vote totals suffered because the PPACA was passed into law. But the the opposite is just as possible -- maybe on average everyone would have lot by more and some close races would have been lost instead of won if the PPACA had not passed. Who can say? The country was, and still, is pretty evenly divided, based on the election exit poll:
In last night's exit polls, 47% said they believed the health care reform should either be expanded or kept the way that it is, while 48% said it should be repealed.
Still, given these two sets of stats, those from yesterday's diary and these in today's, it seems pretty darned unlikely that voting for health care reform back in March had a deleterious affect. In fact, the opposite effect is much more likely given the data:
Those who voted in favor of health care reform and lost did better than those who voted against heath care reform and ended up losing.
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Here's the summary statistics and all the differentials.
The first column of the table represents the difference between the percentage of the vote the candidate got in 2008 and the percentage of the vote the candidate got in 2010. So if candidate Smith got 53.2% of the vote in 2008 and got 46.1% of the vote in 2010 the CHANGE column would show 7.1%. The HCV column gives the Congressperson's vote on the PPACA.
Average differential: -12.03
Average Yes on HCR differential: -11.45
Average No on HCR differential: -13.26
Total: 50, Total yes: 34, Total no: 16
CHANGE CANDIDATE CD HCV
27.5 Taylor MS-4 N
21.7 Sandlin SD-1 N
21.2 Oberstar MN-8 Y
20.8 Skelton MO-4 N
20.5 Boyd FL-2 Y
20.2 Davis TN-4 N
19.5 Space OH-18 N
18.4 Etheridge NC-2 Y
17.2 Wilson OH-6 Y
16.9 Kosmas FL-24 Y
16.9 Pomeroy ND-1 Y
16.4 Edwards TX-17 N
16.3 Spratt SC-5 Y
15.9 Salazar CO-3 Y
15.9 Halvorson IL-11 Y
15.6 Hill IN-9 Y
15.4 Markey CO-4 Y
14.2 Boccieri OH-16 Y
13.8 Grayson FL-8 Y
13.8 Childers MS-1 N
13.1 Mcmahon NY-13 N
12.7 Foster IL-14 Y
12.4 Bean IL-8 Y
12.4 Kirkpatrick AZ-1 Y
11.5 Hall NY-19 Y
11.4 Teague NM-2 N
11.4 Carney PA-10 Y
11.4 Rodriguez TX-23 Y
10.9 Ortiz TX-27 Y
10.5 Murphy PA-8 Y
9.9 Nye VA-2 N
9.8 Marshall GA-8 N
9.4 Minnick ID-1 N
9.2 Mitchell AZ-5 Y
9.0 Klein FL-22 Y
8.8 Kagen WI-8 Y
8.5 Shea-Porter NH-1 Y
7.6 Kratovil MD-1 N
7.4 Dreihaus OH-1 Y
6.8 Dahlkemper PA-3 Y
6.1 Kanjorski PA-11 Y
5.6 Murphy NY-20 Y
5.1 Kilroy OH-15 Y
5.0 Maffei NY-25 Y
4.9 Adler NJ-3 N
4.9 Arcuri NY-24 N
3.4 Schauer MI-7 Y
3.0 Perriello VA-5 Y
1.3 Bright AL-2 N
0.0 Titus NV-3 Y