Democrats are hoping to once again ride their legal losses on the abortion issue to electoral success. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Heath ruling, the left-wing voters and pro-abortion independents were energized for the midterm elections. But that was two years ago – and that kind of energy is hard to maintain over the long haul. Can Democrats manage to rile up the electorate again, or is abortion outrage old news?
All in for Abortion
The blowback from the 2022 Supreme Court ruling made a difference in that year’s midterm elections, and Democrats hoping to ride that wave again this year are pulling out all the stops. As Liberty Nation News reported in June, before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the president’s surrogates were hitting the swing states hard, trying to drum up abortion outrage and fire up voters. Kamala did much the same when she took over the ticket, and she did her level best to make abortion and IVF access the central argument of the election. In fact, at times it seems to be the only issue Democrats really have to campaign on this year.
In the House, Democrats need to flip four seats to take the majority, and super PACs have released ads targeting anti-abortion Republicans in a handful of districts that many are calling misleading. Several ads featured doctors speaking out against Republican candidates in very specific, vulnerable districts. But, as NBC News reported earlier this week, public property records show that those doctors didn’t actually live in the districts in question. One such ad, aimed at Colorado’s Eighth District, featured a doctor living in the Sixth District who said Representative Gabe Evans (R-CO) “should never represent us in Congress.” Well, Evans won’t represent her in Congress since she doesn’t live in his district. Another obstetrician was featured in an ad targeting Rep. Lori Chavez DeRemer (R-OR) in Oregon’s battleground Fifth District. “Our future can’t be trusted with Lori Chavez DeRemer,” she said – as a resident of the state’s First District.
Some call it false advertising – others argue the doctors treat women from other districts as well, and so they’re just acting as a voice for their patients. Will Reinert, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, had harsher words for it. “After wrecking the economy and opening the border to violent criminals and drugs, extreme House Democrats are grasping at straws by spreading falsehoods about Republicans’ reasonable position on women’s heathcare,” he said. “But here’s what’s even more egregious: [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries’ super PAC can’t even find local doctors willing to regurgitate their lies.”
Intentional or otherwise, using doctors from outside the contested districts certainly seems dishonest – and that makes Democrats look desperate. But despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party, there are signs that all their work may be for naught.
Floundering in Florida
A poll published by The New York Times and Siena College on Tuesday, October 8, showed that less than half of Florida voters would amend the state’s constitution to protect abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy. The survey, conducted between September 29 and October 6, found that 46% of likely voters in the state would support Amendment 4, while 38% wouldn’t, and 16% either weren’t sure or refused to answer.
Abortion advocates may look at those numbers and rejoice – more likely voters support enshrining abortion in the state’s constitution than don’t. But a constitutional amendment in the Sunshine State requires 60% of the vote. Furthermore, a look at the crosstabs shows that there were only 622 respondents to the abortion amendment question. As reported by the Associated Press back in August, there are about 13.5 million registered voters in Florida.
Another interesting nugget from that same survey: When asked who they would vote for, assuming the candidates were Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West, and Chase Oliver, 53% chose Trump to just 40% for Harris. That does seem to fit with the state demographics, as that AP report mentions that Republicans now outnumber Democrats in voter registration by about a million people.
A Swing and a Miss in Michigan
There’s another issue for the Democrats that may prove more disastrous this election year than simple issue fatigue and increased Republican voter registration, however. After Dobbs, enraged activists prophesied a national abortion ban. It never materialized. They declared that abortion would be outlawed around the nation. In several red states, this did occur. But in the blue states, the exact opposite happened. Several states either passed laws or constitutional amendments that protect abortion access. In those states, it’s proving difficult to hype up the issue because it’s already settled.
Michigan – a crucial swing state in this election – is one of them. Voters overwhelmingly passed a state ballot issue in 2022 that amended the state constitution to protect abortion. Voters who pulled the proverbial lever for this ballot issue, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Representative Elissa Slotkin – who’s now running for Senate – saw what was, for them, a problem at the national level, solved it at the state level, then moved on with their lives. For them – and even most of the Republicans in the state – the issue is settled. Restrictive abortion laws, not something likely to have happened in Michigan even without the new amendment, are no longer seen as an imminent threat.
The economy, on the other hand, is.
A survey earlier this year from Emerson College Polling and The Hill showed the economy as the top issue for Michigan voters, with abortion barely making the list. That’s important because, as LNN’s economic guru Andrew Moran explained in his analysis of recent polling of “registered US voters” from Gallup, “there was zero overlap between the parties.” Republicans cited the economy as the top issue (about 66% of registered Republicans and independents who lean right), followed by immigration (63%), crime (52%), and taxes (46%). Among Democrats and independents who lean left, the top issue was “democracy” at 58%, followed by Supreme Court picks (57%), and abortion (49%).
In the Michigan polling earlier in the year, the economy was the top issue for almost a third of the voters surveyed (31%). Following that came immigration (13%), threats to democracy (12%), health care (10%), housing affordability (8%), and education (7%). Abortion access came in at a mere 4%.
Democratic voters – and, far more importantly, swing state independents – were fired up in 2022 over abortion access. But that was then, and this is now. After four years of Bidenomics and a couple of post-Roe years in which the Democrat doomsayers’ predictions failed to manifest, abortion doesn’t seem to be the inspiration they need.
Dig Deeper into the Themes Discussed in this Article!
Liberty Vault: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
Liberty Vault: Roe v. Wade
