From: Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling
To: Interested Parties
Subject: Exit Poll of AZ-08 Shows Health Care Made Race Close
Date: April 24, 2018
Public Policy Polling conducted a telephone exit poll election survey of voters who cast ballots in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District special election yesterday. Voters who voted in the contest were asked about the role of health care in their decision.
In this overwhelmingly Republican district, the exit poll shows that health care was a top priority issue to voters and that they believed Democrats’ views were more in step with theirs on the issue. That’s a big part of why the race was so much closer than expected based on the history of the district.
In 2016, voters in this district backed Donald Trump by 21 points and, in 2012, they backed Mitt Romney by 25 points. GOP Governor Doug Ducey won the district by 27 points in 2014.
–Health care was a top issue to voters. Health care was ranked as a top issue for 58% of voters (20% saying it was the most important issue and another 38% saying it was very important). Only 17% said it was not that important or not important at all.
- Hiral Tipirneni won big especially among voters for whom health care was a top priority. Among voters who said health care was the most important issue for them, Tipirneni beat Lesko 65-33.
–On health care, voters said Tipirneni better reflected their views by 2 points (45% to 43%) over Lesko. With independents, that gap widened to 30 points with 57% saying Tipirneni’s health care views were more in line with theirs to only 27% for Lesko.
–Voters were less likely to support Lesko because of the Republican health care agenda. Lesko’s support of the Republican health care agenda made 40% of voters less likely to vote for her and only 33% more likely to support her.
–Voters in this heavily Republican district disapproved of the Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act by 5 points (49% to 44%).
- Only 41% of voters think the best path forward on health care is to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to 54% who think it should be kept in place with fixes made to it as necessary.
PPP surveyed 516 AZ-08 voters on April 24th. The margin of error is +/- 4.3%. This survey was a project of Protect Our Care.