Politics
Pramila Jayapal pushes Medicare for All polling
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wants Medicare for All back in the health care debate.
The former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair plans to present polling to her House Democratic colleagues next month as she argues for the electoral merits of Medicare for All — even in battleground districts the party must win to flip the House next fall. The research, paid for by Jayapal’s leadership PAC and shared first with Blue Light News, found one in five Republicans support a “government-provided system,” as do most independents. Democrats back Medicare for All by 90 percent.
Two-thirds of voters said the federal government does “too little” to help people afford health care. Just 18 percent said the government does “too much.”
Jayapal’s Medicare for All push comes as Democrats have been largely unified on their health care messaging, pushing Republicans on the back foot about extending expiring Obamacare subsidies. Injecting Medicare for All back into the debate could also reopen a long-running intraparty fight that moderate Democrats aren’t keen to have.
In an interview, Jayapal described swing district voters’ openness to Medicare for All and a desire for “fundamental change” as a “significant shift” in recent years. She cited the rising costs of health care for making the current system less appealing to swing voters who “don’t feel like they can afford health care right now” and “don’t feel like they have a choice right now.”
“Whatever tropes they may have had about Medicare for all, those don’t really exist today in the public’s mind,” Jayapal said, arguing Democrats should now “put forward a very united and universal, comprehensive vision for health care in this country.”
Democrats are hoping to make health care a central midterm messaging — tying this fall’s federal government shutdown to a debate within the GOP over extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Jayapal hopes to nudge her party into not only pushing back on President Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA, but also “be ready with a proactive vision” for voters, she said.
Jayapal will undoubtedly face pushback from moderate Democrats over championing an issue that’s long divided the party. Medicare for All defined much of the ideological battle of the 2020 presidential primary, serving as the progressives’ flagship policy. After Joe Biden, who didn’t back it citing the price tag, won the primary, the policy largely fell out of the conversation.
Over the last five years, Medicare for All has remained popular among Democrats — and Jayapal argues her latest research shows that it’s increasingly intriguing to independents and Republicans, who are feeling the pinch of rising health care costs. Jayapal said she’ll pitch her polling to Republican members, too, though she declined to name them.
“There’s going to be some internal resistance [to Medicare for All] but it needs to be informed by polling, and in our survey, a majority of voters are in favor of it,” said David Walker, a pollster at GQR Research who conducted the survey. “We didn’t gild the lily [in the survey], we didn’t say it’d all be free.”
The poll described Medicare for All to participants as a “system [that] would still use the same doctors and hospitals as today, but take the profit motive out of health care by using a government-administered insurance system, like Medicare or Medicaid,” acknowledging “taxes will increase for many Americans,” but added, “those could be offset by not having to pay for health insurance premiums, co-pays or out-of-pocket costs.” The poll found 54 percent of voters nationally and 56 percent in battleground districts back Medicare for All.
Jaypal acknowledged confusion around the meaning of Medicare for All, and suggested adding “improved” to the slogan, as a nod to Americans’ frustrations with the existing Medicare program.
Jayapal said she intentionally used a polling firm that works closely with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because “we wanted to make it clear this isn’t some fringe poll.” GQR surveyed 1,000 likely 2026 voters from Nov. 5 to Nov. 13, oversampling voters in battleground House seats. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.
President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire’s open Senate race, boosting a longtime critic over one of his former ambassadors, Scott Brown.
Trump hailed Sununu, who Republicans see as their best chance to flip the blue Senate seat, as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post Sunday afternoon. And Trump said Sununu will “work tirelessly to advance our America First Agenda.”
“John E. Sununu has my Complete and Total Endorsement — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN — ELECT JOHN E. SUNUNU,” he posted.
Sununu, a moderate who has opposed Trump across his presidential runs, thanked him in a statement and quickly pivoted to talking about his priorities for New Hampshire.
“I want to thank the President for his support and thank the thousands of Granite Staters who are supporting me,” Sununu said. “This campaign has and always will be about standing up for New Hampshire — every single day.”
Trump’s endorsement further tips the scales in an already pitched GOP primary between Sununu and Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the Senate before moving to New Hampshire and running unsuccessfully for Senate there in 2014. He served as Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in his first term, and has been presenting himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate as he courts the MAGA base.
Brown vowed to fight on. And he took a veiled shot at Sununu, accusing him of not being sufficiently dedicated to the MAGA movement.
“I am running to ensure our America First agenda is led by someone who views this mission not as a career path, but as a continuation of a lifelong commitment to service,” Brown said in a post on X. “Let’s keep working.”
The two are competing to take on Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas issued a simple response to Trump’s endorsement of Sununu: “I’m Chris Pappas, and I approve this message,” he wrote on X. His campaign manager, Rachel Pretti, said in a statement that Trump’s endorsement “confirms” that Sununu “will sell out Granite Staters to advance his political career.”
Trump’s support for Sununu once would have seemed unfathomable. The scion of a moderate New Hampshire Republican dynasty, Sununu served as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and joined his family in backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president against Trump in the 2024 GOP primary.
Ahead of New Hampshire’s 2024 presidential primary, Sununu penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a “loser.” (Trump went on to win by 11 points). And he later derided Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “completely inappropriate.”
Republicans initially were bullish about flipping an open seat in purple New Hampshire that’s already changed hands between parties twice this century — Sununu defeated Shaheen to win the seat in 2002, then lost it to her in 2008 — and coalesced quickly behind the moderate Republican as their best option against Pappas. Sununu received instant backing from the GOP’s Senate campaign arm upon his launch last October and has wracked up endorsements from the majority of Republican senators. He’s also won support from Republican leaders in New Hampshire — all of which Trump noted in his Truth Social post Sunday.
Trump also initially supported Sununu’s younger brother, former Gov. Chris Sununu, running for the Senate seat. Chris Sununu, also a vocal Trump critic, declined to launch a bid, prompting GOP interest in his brother.
But some in Trump’s Granite State MAGA base quickly rejected his endorsement of Sununu, calling it a “slap in the face to grassroots supporters” long loyal to the president.
“The Sununu family openly mocked, degraded, and worked against the America First movement, the President himself, and the policies that energized New Hampshire voters,” a group of MAGA activists wrote on X. “We will continue and intensify our campaign opposition to the Sununu operation.”
Sununu holds a wide lead over Brown in polling of the GOP primary. The latest, a University of New Hampshire online survey of likely primary voters from mid-January, showed Sununu up 48 percent to 25 percent with 26 percent of likely voters undecided. But Pappas is ahead of both Republicans in hypothetical general-election matchups, leading Sununu by 5 percentage points and Brown by 10 percentage points in the UNH poll. The survey of 967 likely GOP primary voters had a margin of error of +/-3.2 percent.
Pappas also outraised both Republicans, bringing in $2.3 million last quarter and amassing a $3.2 million war chest heading into the year. Sununu hauled in $1.3 million and had $1.1 million in cash on hand in his primary campaign account while Brown raised $347,000 through his main account and had $907,000 in the bank.
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