Pro-choice is poison at the General election. It does well as a ballot initiative, but the reality is that very few pro-choice moderates and right-leaning people will change their vote over the issue, whereas pro-lifers are far and away the strongest single-issue voting group.
If Harris and Trump were identical in every way except their stance on abortion, how many Dem voters would flip for Trump in order to vote pro-choice? Would you?
Because millions of people who are otherwise liberal-leaning vote based on their pro-lifer position.
The biggest reason Dems got a Roe boost in 2022 was pro-lifer voters who didn’t feel the need to vote Republican because they’d won and could focus on other issues. But running a campaign based on restoring Roe undoes that bump.
That’s not what the data tells us. If that was the case the abortion referendums would have failed while Democrats got a push. But they didn’t. They consistently succeeded in even the reddest areas. Abortion protections gets people out to vote.
A pro-choice gun nut won’t vote Democrat because he cares more about guns than the right to choose. But when you put it as a ballot initiative he doesn’t have to weigh it against anything else.
The thing about single-issue voters is that they can swing elections even though they’re a minority. The GOP has survived for decades by embracing the pro-life and pro-gun voters. These are massive groups with voters on one side who will base the entirety of their vote on the issue, while the other side of the debate doesn’t.
The GOP has survived for decades because we vote for land, not people. They consistently hold majorities in government with a minority of the population.
Pro-choice is poison at the General election. It does well as a ballot initiative, but the reality is that very few pro-choice moderates and right-leaning people will change their vote over the issue, whereas pro-lifers are far and away the strongest single-issue voting group.
If Harris and Trump were identical in every way except their stance on abortion, how many Dem voters would flip for Trump in order to vote pro-choice? Would you?
Because millions of people who are otherwise liberal-leaning vote based on their pro-lifer position.
The biggest reason Dems got a Roe boost in 2022 was pro-lifer voters who didn’t feel the need to vote Republican because they’d won and could focus on other issues. But running a campaign based on restoring Roe undoes that bump.
That’s not what the data tells us. If that was the case the abortion referendums would have failed while Democrats got a push. But they didn’t. They consistently succeeded in even the reddest areas. Abortion protections gets people out to vote.
Abortion refferendums are easy.
A pro-choice gun nut won’t vote Democrat because he cares more about guns than the right to choose. But when you put it as a ballot initiative he doesn’t have to weigh it against anything else.
The thing about single-issue voters is that they can swing elections even though they’re a minority. The GOP has survived for decades by embracing the pro-life and pro-gun voters. These are massive groups with voters on one side who will base the entirety of their vote on the issue, while the other side of the debate doesn’t.
The GOP has survived for decades because we vote for land, not people. They consistently hold majorities in government with a minority of the population.
2022 should have been a red wave, but wasn’t. There are proposals to make draconian anti-abortion laws national and override state protections.
I wouldn’t underestimate its power to reengage voters, especially the youth vote.