Obamacare is the gift that keeps on giving – to Republicans. Politico today publishes its first 2014 election poll and finds “mounting danger for Dems,” owing to health care issues. Alexander Burns writes:

President Barack Obama’s job approval slump and voters’ entrenched wariness of his health care law are dogging Democrats ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, and Republicans have captured a lead in the areas home to the year’s most competitive races, according to a new POLITICO poll.

In the [68] congressional districts and [16] states where the 2014 elections will actually be decided, likely voters said they would prefer to vote for a Republican over a Democrat by 7 points, 41 percent to 34 percent. A quarter of voters said they were unsure of their preference.

Among these critical voters, Obama’s job approval is a perilous 40 percent, and nearly half say they favor outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Sixty percent say they believe the debate over the law is not over, compared with 39 percent who echo the president’s position and say the ACA debate has effectively concluded.

Where it counts, in the competitive districts and states, the Democrats are in worse shape than in overall national polls.

Both Obama’s job approval and the partisan ballot matchup are markedly more negative for Democrats in this poll than other national surveys — a reflection of the political reality that the midterm campaign is being fought on turf that is more challenging for Democrats than the nation as a whole.

And the reason is clear:

Nearly nine in 10 respondents said that the health care law would be important to determining their vote, including 49 percent who said it would be very important. By comparison, only 28 percent said that immigration reform was 'very important' to determining their vote, and 16 percent who said the same of male-female income disparity."

It is too soon to lay in the champagne stocks for Election Night, but it is time to focus on health care as the principal issue for the campaign.