Among the many issues crossing American voters' minds today was the future of the country's healthcare system, as Democratic primary voters sought to choose between candidates with competing visions.
Primary voters in two states — Vermont, home state of single-payer advocate Sanders, and nearby Maine — stood out in preliminary exit polls as particularly supportive of a major policy change on this front.
In each state, roughly seven in 10 primary voters said they would support "replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone."
Voters in states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee were more closely divided in exit polls, though more supported than opposed single-payer healthcare in each state. Division wasn't limited to the South, though: In early exit polls from Massachusetts, supporters of single-payer healthcare were only outpacing opponents by about 10 percentage points.
Voters in every Super Tuesday Democratic primary consistently identified healthcare as the most important issue to them among four issues tested, ranging from close to half of voters in Oklahoma and Maine, to four in 10 voters or more in every other state except Colorado and California, according to preliminary exit polls.