The Democrats have been getting some good news about their election results, but buried in it is some bad news about their appeal. Even as they embrace socialized medicine, Medicaid-for-All, or as they insist on misleadingly calling their plan to destroy Medicare, Medicare-for-All, it’s political poison.

The results in Table 2 show that Democratic candidates supporting Medicare for All did substantially worse than those who did not — winning only 45% of their races compared with 72% for the non-supporters. Their average vote margin of 0.5 percentage points was also somewhat worse than the average vote margin of 3.5 points for the non-supporters. This was true despite the fact that in terms of 2016 presidential vote margin, the districts of supporters were somewhat more Democratic (average Clinton margin of -0.2 points) than the districts of non-supporters (average Clinton margin of -2.7 points)

The results in Table 3 indicate that after controlling for all of the other variables affecting the outcomes of these contests, Democratic candidates who endorsed Medicare for All did significantly worse than those who did not. The estimated coefficient of -4.6 indicates that support for Medicare for All cost Democratic candidates in these competitive districts almost five points of vote margin — a substantial effect in a close election.

These are dangerous numbers. Especially now that Pelosi lost her battle to stop the Dems from driving the party off a cliff.