Yesterday, CNN released a new poll focussed on abortion and two years after the MAGA Supreme Court overturned Roe, many voters are still seething. But that isn’t translating into political action, not even among those who think the Supreme Court erred. “The country’s widespread opposition to the 2022 Supreme Court decision, which held that women do not have a federal constitutional right to an abortion, does not translate into equally broad support for taking federal action to protect abortion access. Roughly half of US adults, 49%, want to see federal politicians work to enshrine abortion access nationally, while 37% say abortion laws should be left to states, and 14% call for nationwide restrictions.”
CNN found that “About two-thirds (65%) oppose the 2022 Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and 34% approve, numbers that have remained effectively unchanged in CNN’s polling across the nearly two years since the ruling. Those who strongly disapprove of the decision continue to outnumber those who strongly approve by a more than 2-to-1 margin. A 69% majority who disapprove of overturning Roe, including 82% of those who strongly disapprove, say that federal politicians should work to pass laws ensuring national abortion access. Those who support the ruling largely say federal politicians shouldn’t take action on the issue: 59% say laws on abortion should be left up to the states, with 29% in favor of further restrictions to abortion access nationwide. New national restrictions are supported by just about one-quarter of Republicans, White Evangelical Christians and those who describe themselves as conservative.”
With Biden all in on making abortion access and Choice key election issues, Señor T is having a hard time explaining his position while balancing a need to placate his extremist base— many of whom want abortion outlawed and punished— with what normal voters want. “Trump has recently distanced himself from GOP-led pushes for a national ban, saying that abortion regulations should be left to the states, although he refused in a recent Time interview to commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban or to say if he’d support states prosecuting women who sought abortions, reiterating that the decision is up to the states… Florida, Maryland and New York will all vote on measures to establish new protections for abortion, while 10 other states [— Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and Pennsylvania—] are currently considering adding abortion-related measures to the November ballot.”
About one-quarter of registered voters, 24%, say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion, with 55% saying they’d consider a candidate’s abortion position as one of many important factors when voting, and 21% saying they wouldn’t see abortion as a major issue.
The share who say they’d only support politicians they agreed with on abortion represents a downtick from the 31% of registered voters who said the same in July 2023. That decline comes largely from the voters who supported the decision to overturn Roe, suggesting that any motivation advantage on this issue lies with proponents of abortion rights. Last summer, voters who disapproved of the Dobbs decision were 4 points likelier than those who approved of it to say they viewed the issue as a litmus test, 32% to 28%. That gap has now widened to 10 points, 27% to 17%.
How does that translate into voters’ initial decisions when it comes to the 2024 presidential candidates? Among registered voters who disapprove of the Dobbs decision and say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views, 81% currently say they’d back Biden against Trump, with 14% currently backing Trump. Among those who disapprove of Dobbs but say it’s just one of many issues important to them, 6 in 10 back Biden, with 32% supporting Trump.
Among those registered voters who disapprove of overturning Roe and aren’t currently backing Biden, 15% say they’d consider voting for him, slightly higher than the 9% of non-Biden-supporters overall who currently say they’d consider voting to reelect the president.
…Most Americans, 58%, say they believe Biden will work to enact national laws ensuring access to abortion if he’s reelected this year, with 29% saying he’ll leave abortion laws up to the states and 13% that he’ll work to enact national laws restricting abortion. By contrast, a 54% majority say they think Trump will leave abortion laws up to the states if he wins the election, with 34% expecting Trump to work toward restricting abortion nationally, and 12% expecting him to work toward ensuring access.
Yesterday Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria reminded their readers that in his now notorious Time interview, Trump “laid out a dystopian vision where pregnant women could be placed under state surveillance and then subjected to criminal punishment for any transgressions. Trump, who wants the states to do his dirty work, was clear that he would be “comfortable if states decide to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned."
Trump, they wrote “also dodged questions about whether he would attempt to impose a federal ban on abortion pills. During his interview with Time, Trump said that he’d make a statement in two weeks on whether his administration would be enforcing the Comstock Act— an 1873 law that makes it illegal to mail “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials. But 18 days have passed since the interview, and Trump has still not said what he plans to do.”
Even if he’s trying— unsuccessfully— to dodge the whole debate by shoving it all over to the states, he adamantly refused to answer whether or not he would sign a national abortion ban. The Time interviewer, Eric Cortellessa, asked him four times.
Yesterday, Digby wrote that Trump’s responses in the Time interview were so deranged that they could actually do him in. When he said he’s fine with states monitoring women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban,” Digby noted that that’s going to beset by many as as him being just perfectly ok “with whatever medieval torture a state might want to inflict. That wasn’t all. He went on to say that states prosecuting women who get abortions is none of his concern and said that he would reveal his position on a possible national ban on the widely used drug Mifepristone in two weeks. (The two weeks have passed and when Time approached him to see if he had an update he extended it.)… And he was unwilling to say whether he will vote to overturn the 6 week abortion ban that just went into effect in his home state of Florida just this week next November and, again, he said that it would be up to the state.