Medicaid expansion: Official tally

In a blog on February 14, I predicted that a 2-to-1 plurality of 34 state governors would ultimately recommend the Medicaid Expansion and provided a current tally of their recommendations. Of course, the difficulty inherent in that number is that 30 governors are Republicans and initially, Republicans came out united in their opposition to the Medicaid Expansion, led by six Governors in the very conservative South--Rick Perry (Texas), Bobby Jindal (Louisiana), Phil Bryant (Mississippi), Robert Bentley (Alabama), Nathan Deal (Georgia), and Nikki Haley (South Carolina). These six southern Republican governors opposed to the Medicaid expansion were joined by Oklahoma's Mary Fallin, Idaho's Butch Otter, Iowa's Terry Branstad, Maine's Paul LePage, and South Dakota's Dennis Daugaard within a matter of months -11 GOP governors standing united in recommending against the expansion. 

On the other side of the aisle, 13 Democratic governors announced their support of the Medicaid Expansion: Jerry Brown (California), Colorado's John Hickenlooper (Colorado), Dan Malloy (Connecticut), Jack Markell (Delaware), Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), Pat Quinn (Illinois), Martin O'Malley (Maryland), Deval Patrick (Massachusetts), Mark Dayton (Minnesota), Jay Nixon (Missouri), Steve Bullock (Montana), Peter Shumlin (Vermont), and Jay Inslee (Washington).

Then, the party lines started to break down. Since this initial 11-13 split along party lines, there has been a lot of consideration and debate on both sides, leading to some surprising decisions: 

As shown above, six more Republican governors joined the opponents of Medicaid expansion, while seven Republicans (plus one more Democrat) joined the governors who support the Expansion.  This puts the tally at 21 for Expansion and 17 against, so for now, my prediction of 34 governors in favor is shot. The breakdown by party of those who have taken a position so far is is as follows:

Of the 12 remaining undecided governors, six are Republican, five Democratic, and one is independent: 

I continue to believe that all of the remaining undecided Democratic governors, as well as Chaffee, the independent, will support the Medicaid Expansion. And, I also believe that most of the undecided Republicans will go along with it as well. There's also a distinct possibility that state legislators will take matters into their own hands and act against a governor's recommendation. That is definitely a possibility in Iowa, for example, where opposition to Governor Branstead's recommendation to forego the Expansion is quite strong. Let's see what happens this week.