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Washington, DC - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Kamarck and co-author Alexander Podkul coded 1,662 hopefuls for House seats, including incumbents, and analyzed the candidates based on their demographic information, their political faction and their positions on issues. The analysis of races spanned every state and excluded only candidates who didnt have to file with the Federal Elections Committee, third-party candidates and those who withdrew.

Presidential primaries have frequently been studied, but congressional primaries have been, until now, the ignored stepchild of the American political system, Kamarck said, adding that the key to understanding politics is knowing the factions at play.

This was a primary election about health care, Kamarck said. This issue remains every bit as polarized as it was at this time last year.

Democratic hopefuls took nuanced approaches to the issue. Most candidates on the left supported the law, about a quarter took what Kamarck called a mend it dont end it approach and about 37 percent didnt bring it up at all.

It was practically a prerequisite to pledge to fight it to the death, said political columnist Jill Lawrence of Republican candidates take on Obamacare. Lawrence and another political journalist, Walter Shapiro, did a second study looking at campaign narratives from dozens of competitive races across the country for the Brookings primaries project.

It almost seemed like they were sitting there with a thesaurus trying to find the worst word they could think of to describe it, Lawrence said.

Immigration reform was another boilerplate issue during the primaries, and most candidates took a position on it.

Republican candidates were more likely to have nuanced opinions of immigration, with 11 percent taking complicated positions, which according to the study means they may have supported a path to citizenship but opposed amnesty for undocumented workers.

About 43 percent of Republicans, almost uniformly tea partyers, opposed reform or argued exclusively for securing the border. Notably, the study said the majority of Republicans who won spots on the general-election ballot were opposed to immigration reform.

About half of the Democrats who ran for House seats supported comprehensive immigration reform outright and less than 1 percent were opposed. About 3 percent of Democrats had a complicated position. Forty-six percent of Democrats had no discernable position.

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2014 Primary Elections: They Were All About Obamacare and Immigration