On Monday, Marist released a poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus that showed sudden, dramatic gains for the pro-life side of America’s long abortion fight. The poll showed that Americans are evenly split on whether they identify as pro-life and pro-choice at 47 percent each. That would be a big shift from January, when the poll found that 55 percent considered themselves to be pro-choice and 38 percent said they were pro-life. …
But everyone should stay calm and take some deep breaths before concluding that the landscape of abortion politics in the United States has dramatically shifted in a single month, no matter how crazy that month was for coverage of the issue. Over time, analysts have collectively developed some informal rules for reading polls just like this one. And these rules, when properly applied, suggest that we shouldn’t revise our perception of abortion polling just yet. CONT.
David Byler, Washington Post