Whites as a whole, who made up 75% of 2014’s electorate, voted for Republican House candidates by a 24-point margin, 62% - 38%

The opposition of whites to the Democratic Party is visible not only in voting behavior, but in general opposition to key Democratic policy initiatives, most tellingly in hostility toward the Affordable Care Act. A November 2013 National Journal poll found, for example, that 58% of whites said that Obamacare would make things worse for “people like you and your family,” more than double the 25% who said that Obamacare would make things better. Asked whether the Affordable Care Act would make things better or worse for the country at large, 60% of whites said worse and 35% of whites said better. Obamacare shifts health care benefits and tax burdens from upper-income Americans to lower-income Americans, and from largely white constituencies to beneficiaries disproportionately made up of racial and ethnic minorities. The program increases levies on the overwhelmingly white affluent by raising taxes on households making more than $250,000. To achieve its goals, Obamacare reduces by $500 billion, over 10 years, spending on Medicare, according to the Medicare board of trustees, which oversees the finances of the program. Medicare serves a population that is 77% white. Even as reductions in Medicare spending fall disproportionately on white voters, the savings are being used to finance Obamacare, which includes a substantial expansion of Medicaid. Medicaid recipients are overwhelmingly poor and, in 2013, were 41% white and 59% minority. In addition to expanding Medicaid, the overall goal of % percent white, and 53% black, Hispanic, Asian-American and other minorities. It’s not hard to see, then, why a majority of white midterm voters withheld support from Democrats and cast their votes for Republicans.