Skip to content

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020

Did support for ‘Medicare for All’ cost any House members their seats in the 2020 election?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
no

No incumbent House Democrats who supported a 2019 "Medicare for All" bill have yet lost their 2020 reelection campaign. Freshman California congressman and Medicare for All supporter T.J. Cox is trailing in a race that's still too close to call.

The eight House Democrats who lost their seats did not support the health care proposal. Additionally, in each of the three Democratic primaries in which a challenger defeated an incumbent, the challenger supported Medicare for All. Seven Democrats in battleground races who did not support Medicare for All did win reelection.

The goal of extending health care insurance to all Americans has gained popularity steadily in recent years. An October poll by KFF found 53% of respondents support the House proposal to create a national system.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.