Some Democrats and their advocates in the press believe Obamacare, a year into implementation, is no longer much of a factor in the midterm elections. But no one has told Republican candidates, who are still pounding away at the Affordable Care Act on the stump. And no one has told voters, especially those in states with closely contested Senate races, who regularly place it among the top issues of the campaign.
In Arkansas, Republican challenger Tom Cotton is pulling ahead of incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor partly on the strength of a relentless focus on Obamacare.
"In our polling, Obamacare continues to be just as hot as it's been all year long," says a source in the Cotton campaign. "If you look at a word cloud of voters' biggest hesitation in voting for Mark Pryor, the two biggest words are 'Obama' and 'Obamacare.' Everything after that is almost an afterthought."
Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, is pushing just as hard. "Sen. Landrieu, I voted for you before, but when you voted for Obamacare, I knew I'd made a mistake," says a woman in a Cassidy ad featuring Landrieu voters who say her support of the health care law turned them away from Democrats.
So Republican candidates bash Obamacare and move up in the polls. Given that public opinion remains firmly against the health care law -- as it has been for years -- that's not a shock. Democratic beliefs to the contrary are probably wishful thinking.
Polls suggest that more and more, opposition to Obamacare is based on voters' personal experience, and not just on what they have heard or read about the law.
Since Obamacare was enacted in 2010, the Gallup polling organization has asked people whether the law has helped or hurt them personally, or whether they haven't been affected at all. In the latest survey, most people -- 54 percent -- said they have not been affected. But 27 percent said they have been affected and hurt, while a smaller group, 16 percent, said they have been helped.
"Since the start of this year, the percentage saying the law has helped them has increased from 10 percent to 16 percent," Gallup noted, "while the percentage saying it has hurt them has also gone up, and by a similar amount, from 19 percent to 27 percent."
The trend is pretty clear: more people hurt then helped.
So Democratic candidates respond to voter unhappiness by pledging to "fix" Obamacare. But their hearts don't seem to be in it. At a recent debate in New Hampshire, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was asked to list her proposed fixes, and all she could come up with was a suggestion to name a committee to study problems with the Obamacare website.
That does almost nothing to address voters' concerns, which remain a potent factor in the campaign. The bottom line is, there's a reason Republicans keep pushing so hard against Obamacare: So far, it's working.
Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.