Political scientists lay out how abortion views could impact the vote
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
Political scientists and pollsters who have been studying attitudes on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 told States Newsroom that abortion has become a motivating factor for voters, with the majority opposing the criminalization of pregnancy. Those who support abortion rights are expecting strong turnout, though advocates around the country are anxious about the future.
University of Pennsylvania political science professor Diana Mutz has been analyzing data on swing voters since 2016, trying to learn what compels this tiny slice of Americans who switch support from one party to another. The data comes from probability panel surveys fielded by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.
Mutz, who directs the university’s Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics, told States Newsroom that about 90% of U.S. voters consistently vote the same way regardless of what issues they tell pollsters they care about.
But abortion has proven to be an exception to that rule, now that it’s illegal in many parts of the country. Voters were motivated to change their party support over abortion — unlike any other issue, including inflation — during the 2022 midterm elections, which took place five months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protections, according to Mutz and co-author Edward Mansfield’s findings.
Their analysis, published earlier this year, shows roughly 60% of vote switchers who thought abortion should be legal shifted their votes away from Republican candidates. About the same percentage shifted their votes toward Republican candidates if they thought abortion should be illegal. Because more Americans favor making abortion legal — about 60% vs. 40%, according to this data — Democrats got a small net boost, with 52% of people shifting toward Democratic candidates, compared with 48% of all vote changers shifting toward Republicans.
Mutz said preliminary data based on early voting this year is showing a similar trend.
“We are not seeing people change votes due to the economy, but we are seeing people change votes — relative to their presidential vote in 2020 — based on abortion,” Mutz said. “Among that small segment of the public that does change, what we see is that it is predicted by changes in attitudes toward the Supreme Court in particular, and by their abortion views.”
She said the data also shows that after the Dobbs ruling, support for the nation’s highest court disproportionately fell among Democrats and has not been met with a similar rise in support among Republicans.
Mutz’s findings echo others showing large bipartisan support for abortion rights.
University of Maryland political scientist Steven Kull, in his research looking at voters in six of the seven swing states, has found majority bipartisan support for legalizing abortion through viability and bipartisan opposition to criminalizing abortion, as well as mostly bipartisan support for making abortion policy a federal law that applies to all states.
“I think that there has been a misunderstanding about abortion,” Kull said, explaining that historically, public opinion polls have focused on the morality of abortion, opinions that tend to fall along party lines. “In the work that we do, we focus very much on the actual government action involved, which in this case is criminalization, by making the woman who receives the abortion or the doctor who gives the abortion [face] fines or jail time. When that’s made very explicit, then you have this very strong bipartisan consensus against that.”
Democratic strategists told States Newsroom that abortion could be the factor pushing support to Democrats in critical congressional and state toss-ups, especially in the 10 states where abortion is directly on the ballot in the form of proposed constitutional amendments that would either restore or expand abortion rights, or add further protections. Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since June 2022, each race favoring abortion rights. And the issue is frequently topline among polled voters, especially among women.
Abortion-rights advocates who have poured money and voter outreach into these ballot initiative campaigns worry that Republicans — who have mounted numerous challenges against them, especially in Florida — will contest the election results.
Nourbese Flint, president of the nonprofit All* Above All and its political sister group All* Above All Action Fund, said abortion rights activists are preparing for legal challenges and fighting off any misinformation about the election’s results. They are telling voters the results might not be final on the night of Nov. 5.
But ultimately, she is confident reproductive rights is a major voter driver this election cycle, especially among young women.
“All the polling we’ve seen, all the conversations we’ve had, people have been incredibly motivated to vote in favor for abortion access,” Flint said. “All the polling has said to us and shown that folks are as fired up as they were after Dobbs when it comes to abortion access to vote again.”
Closing on abortion
Though Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race with only 90 days to campaign after replacing President Joe Biden on the ticket, Democratic strategist Alyssa Cass said Harris’ secret weapon has been a major trust advantage over Republican nominee Donald Trump on the issue of abortion. A September poll conducted by Cass’ progressive polling firm Blueprint, showed that 52% of swing state voters trust Harris on abortion, compared with 41% who trust Trump.
Cass said Harris’ campaign has focused on trying to run up her margins with suburban college-educated women, non-college-educated women and young women by focusing on reproductive rights.
“If Kamala Harris wins the election, she’s going to do so carried by the votes of women who remain engaged, mobilized and fired up by the issue of abortion,” Cass said.
Both candidates are closing their campaigns with abortion-heavy messaging. In the final weeks, Trump’s campaign has tried to change the Harris campaign’s narrative that his administration would be a threat to reproductive rights.
Trump’s rhetoric on abortion has vastly shifted since before he began his first presidential term, when he vowed to appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Since doing so, he has said states should decide whether to prosecute women for abortions. Harris and powerful surrogates like former First Lady Michelle Obama have attributed a brewing public health crisis and recent pregnancy-related deaths to “Trump abortion bans.”
But in the final weeks of his third presidential campaign, Trump and his anti-abortion vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, have switched positions on whether they would support a federal abortion ban. They have rhetorically distanced themselves from the far-right Project 2025 plan crafted by former Trump staffers that outlines how a president could nationally curtail abortion access through executive action alone.
John Mize, CEO of anti-abortion policy group Americans United for Life, told States Newsroom in an email that Trump would have other ways to enact federal policy restricting abortion.
“Trump should reinstate the Mexico City Policy, eliminate taxpayer funding from the abortion industry, appoint strong prolife leaders to key roles to stop the weaponization of federal agencies against pro-life Americans, and eliminate abortions being done illegally at VA hospitals,” Mize said, referring to Veterans Affairs hospitals providing abortions to veterans in states where abortion is banned.
The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy, also called the Mexico City Policy, barred giving federal funds to international organizations that provide abortions or give abortion referrals, according to KFF. President Joe Biden revoked the policy when he took office in 2021. Mutz, the Pennsylvania political science professor, said she’ll be able to study whether the late-game GOP strategy is working in swing states when this election is over.
“If people in battleground states who receive a lot of campaign stuff are different in where they perceive Trump from people in non-battleground states, then I would believe that that messaging might be effective,” Mutz said.
Uncertainty in the swing states
The saliency of the abortion issue as a motivating factor for voters in battleground states could depend on various state laws and whether it’s directly on the ballot.
Arizona and Nevada are the only two swing states with abortion-related ballot measures. A question in Arizona — where abortion is banned after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape, incest or genetic abnormalities — asks voters to restore the right up to fetal viability or later for medical emergencies. The Nevada measure could enshrine a similar right in the state constitution, but voters in the Silver State have to approve constitutional amendments twice for them to take effect. Abortion is broadly legal in Nevada.
Amy Pason is a University of Nevada, Reno communications studies professor who specializes in political campaign rhetoric. “A lot of the arguments that are on the against side are finding ways to say, ‘Well, we already have this in our state statutes,’” Pason said.
But she said there is a lot of attention on abortion in the races for elected office. “I think what we do see, in terms of campaigning, is that abortion is tied to the presidential election, and especially our Senate race here between Jacky Rosen and Sam Brown,” Pason said.
Abortion is not on the ballot in North Carolina. Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly passed an abortion restriction last spring and were able to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto after a Charlotte-area lawmaker switched political parties, giving the GOP a supermajority. A law banning most abortions after 12 weeks, with exceptions for pregnant rape and incest victims up to 20 weeks, fetal anomalies for up to 24 weeks and no limits on medical emergencies, took effect in July 2023.
In a September poll conducted by David B. McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, a plurality of likely North Carolina voters — 21% strongly approved and 28% somewhat approved — said they supported the 12-week abortion ban that became law. There was a partisan split: 57.4% of the Democrats who responded disapproved of the ban, while 70.7% of the Republicans approved.
Crucially, unaffiliated voters — the largest group of registered voters in the state — were essentially split on the law: 47% approve but 44.4% disapprove. These close numbers matter in a state where the presidential race was decided by roughly 75,000 voters in 2020, McLennan said.
“In some people’s minds, 12 weeks is better than six weeks or better than a total ban,” McLennan said in an interview. “As we get past the election and I start polling on abortion again, I’m going to try to drill down on that attitude a little bit and say ‘Is it you’re happy with the 12-week law? Would you prefer it to be back to the original 20 weeks? Then would you like to see it go down to six weeks or disappear completely?’ I think there’s more nuance in that result than my numbers may indicate.”
He also asked respondents — there were 802 in the September poll — to compare abortion to the economy in terms of importance at the polls. Forty-one percent of respondents said abortion is more important than the economy. Once again, there’s a partisan split: 54.1% of Democrats ranked abortion over the economy, while just 33.7% of Republicans did the same. A majority of millennial and Gen Z respondents said abortion is more important than the economy.
“Abortion is probably driving some voter turnout,” McLennan said. “But it could be a significant voter turnout, given how close the state is.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter. Kentucky Lantern stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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