A major new poll shows a significant long-term surge in support for abortion rights across America, with strong majorities locking into place in key battleground states. As the public anxiously awaits a ruling from a federal judge who could ban the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide, it’s a reminder that the fight to win back abortion rights could be a powerful tool to mobilize a blue wave in the 2024 presidential election.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute poll, which surveyed over 20,000 people in all 50 states last year, 64% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That’s nearly 10 percentage points higher than it was in 2010. And the percentage of people who said abortion should be illegal in all cases more than halved, from 15% in 2010 to 7% in 2020. The polling data shows that a bigger shift in favor of abortion rights started emerging in 2020, a couple of years before Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
My NBC News colleagues who write the “First Read” newsletter dug up some even more politically potent data points from the poll:
Majorities of residents in 43 states and D.C. think abortion should be legal.
That includes the presidential battlegrounds of Arizona (where 62% say it should be legal in all or most cases), Georgia (57%), Michigan (66%), Nevada (80%), Pennsylvania (61%) and Wisconsin (64%).
It also includes the key 2024 Senate states of Montana (64%), Ohio (66%) and West Virginia (57%).
In other words, in key contests for control of the Senate and the White House, there is widespread support for abortion rights. Republicans looking over these stats should be nervous about their 2024 prospects in these conditions. After all, look what happened in 2022.
As The New York Times’ chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, pointed out in November, one of the key reasons Republicans underperformed expectations so badly in the midterm elections was tied to the threats they posed to abortion rights. In…
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