In what’s likely more bad news for Republicans, American support for abortion rights has grown in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to jettison Roe v. Wade, a new Wall Street Journal poll has found.
And more than half of voters surveyed said the issue has made them more likely to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, the newspaper reported Saturday.
A clear majority oppose abortion restrictions, such as bans at certain points of pregnancy or not allowing women to travel to get a legal abortion, according to the poll.
“According to the survey, 60% of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases — up from 55% in March,” WSJ reports.
Some 29% said it should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger — compared with 30% in March, the poll found. And 6% said it should be illegal in all cases, which is down from 11% in March, the Journal reported.
The poll emphasizes the role the subject could play in November’s elections. Other recent polls and analysis have shown the race for control of the House of Representatives — which Republicans had been expected to win based on historical precedent as the party out of power during the midterm elections — could be tighter than originally predicted, in part due to anger over abortion restrictions. Some GOP candidates have tried to shift the subject away from abortion and even distanced themselves from earlier statements of support for abortion restrictions leading up to November.
Since the top court threw out Roe v. Wade, about a dozen states have banned many or almost all abortions, some through so-called trigger laws set to go into effect after the ruling.
Before the Supreme Court decision in June, “abortion is not an issue that most people ... spent a lot of time thinking about,” said Democratic pollster Molly Murphy; her firm conducted the poll along with Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. What the ruling has done is: “One, we’ve had a national conversation about it; two, it has gone from hypothetical to real,” she said.
The poll surveyed 1,313 registered voters from Aug. 17 to 30, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.