HANOVER, N.H. — Health care issues are important to Lana Leggett-Kealey, who works as a genetic genealogist. But on Tuesday, as she walked out of her polling place at a local high school and into a frigid New England morning, she said she had something bigger on her mind when she cast her vote.
“I want to make sure we have someone competent in the White House,” she said. She wrote in President Joe Biden’s name on her ballot in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary.
The Affordable Care Act’s future is important to Robert Stanhope, a retired bill collector. He said he also wrote in Biden, whose administration has worked to reduce costs under the ACA.
But that wasn’t his motivation for his early-morning visit to the polls. “I’m here to keep Trump out of office,” Stanhope said.
Dave Avery, 61, of Merrimack, New Hampshire, said health care wasn’t on his mind either. He sought to put the former president back in the White House. “Immigration and the economy are my issues,” he said. “We also need more money to stay in our country.”
Voters casting their first ballots in the 2024 presidential election cycle on Tuesday framed health care as a back-burner issue, capping years of political wrangling over Obamacare and a pandemic that strained the nation’s health system.
Donald Trump defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the state’s GOP primary, according to The Associated Press. Biden, who did not appear on the ballot due to disagreements over the primary schedule, won the Democratic contest owing in part to a vigorous write-in campaign.
In interviews with more than 50 voters this week in New Hampshire — a state where 95% of residents have health insurance, one of the highest rates in the country — most people said their vote was about Trump, like him or hate him. But health care concerns — about costs, access, and, especially among Democrats, abortion — weren’t far from…
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