New Poll, Voters Say Choice Is a Winning Issue, and Candidates Are Using It

Across the country, candidates running for both state and national office are learning that voters want to know that they are pro-choice.

It’s almost election day. Are you hoping that none of the candidates, presidential or otherwise, mentions abortion again? Have you accepted the conventional wisdom that suggests that when abortion comes up, the only voters it galvanizes are those who want to see it criminalized?

Not so fast. Across the country, candidates running for both state and national office are learning the opposite.  Voters want to know their position on reproductive health and choice issues — and want to know that they are pro-choice. Writing for The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz examines how this issue became one voters are prioritizing:

[Democratic pollster Celinda] Lake points to a number of factors that are making the issue key this
cycle. It’s a presidential year, and the president’s choice of Supreme
Court justices (the next president could nominate several) are deeply
important at a time when court-watchers anticipate several challenges
to Roe. This message is aimed squarely at moderate and
independent women whose more conservative views on other issues have
often trumped their pro-choice beliefs. In previous years, it hasn’t
seemed possible for one or two judicial appointments to tip the scale
in favor of overturning Roe, but that changed during the Bush years. 

And not just Democratic candidates are trying to establish their pro-choice bona fides — even some Republicans are emphasizing their support for legal abortion and other reproductive health issues. (Be sure to read the entire article for a thorough analysis of how and why abortion and reproductive health became hot issues this year.)

Now new polling from NARAL Pro-Choice America suggests that Sen. Barack Obama can win over Republican and Independent pro-choice women with the same argument. The poll surveyed likely Republican and independent pro-choice women voters in eight battleground states — Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.  The issue of abortion is the only one in which Republican women think Obama will do a better job than Sen. John McCain will — by a 12 point margin. And seventy-two percent of pro-choice Independent women think Obama would do a better job on abortion than McCain.  The poll also found that information about McCain’s position on abortion raised "serious doubts" for 51 percent of Republican pro-choice women voters — while information about McCain’s positions on health care and tax policy concerned 38 and 31 percent of those voters, respectively.

If Obama wants to win over pro-choice Republicans and Independents, he might just talk up not only his support for Roe, but also bring to the table the many other issues central to women’s lives — birth control, sexuality education, family leave, equal pay, child care — he also supports.