As recently as 1984, abortion was not a deeply partisan issue. “The difference in support for the pro-choice position was a mere six percentage points,” Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, told me by email. “40 percent of Democratic identifiers were pro-life, while 39 percent were pro-choice. Among […] Read more »
Unprecedented Texas Abortion Law Meets Long-Term Public Opinion
How does Texas’s new, controversial abortion ban align with Americans’ views on the procedure? Also, why is it so tricky to poll in California? It’s a timely question with Governor Gavin Newsom facing a special recall election next week. Marist Poll Read more »
How Republicans are set to boost Democratic turnout in 2022
Just as Democrats were starting to watch their chances of maintaining majorities in Congress get washed out to sea with President Joe Biden’s declining job approval ratings, Republicans have handed them at least one, and maybe two, life preservers for the 2022 elections. With the historical trend of midterms and […] Read more »
The rise of the pro-choice majority
… The central question in the policy debate is not whether abortion is a good or bad choice, but rather who should make that choice — politicians or women, their doctors, and families. Public opinion is clear. A 2019, ABC/Washington Post poll found just 24 percent wanted their state to […] Read more »
Don’t Be So Sure a Supreme Court Backlash Will Boost Democrats
It took about a minute and a half between the Supreme Court’s decision to let a draconian, constitutionally bizarre abortion law take effect and the widespread conclusion that it would prove a boon to Democratic political hopes even as it provoked their moral outrage. … There is plausibility to this […] Read more »
Texas Republicans Got What They Wanted. They Might Regret It.
… Most American voters have quietly understood for a long time that most politicians who claim to be “pro-life” are hypocrites. These politicians do not really mean what they say, or anyway, they do not really intend to do what they say. You might imagine that this assumption of hypocrisy […] Read more »