In the aftermath of the 2024 election, commentators have written no shortage of postmortems about the performance of Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates. There have been plenty of analyses of swing states and various demographic groups. Many have noted Harris’s worse than expected performance among Hispanics and young African-American men. Interestingly, multiple media outlets have looked at the salience of various issues and have come to conclusion that Kamala Harris’s strong stance in favor of legal abortion was not particularly beneficial.
Indeed, in the months leading up to the election, the conventional wisdom among pundits was that abortion was going to be beneficial to Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates. In particular, they felt that efforts to place abortion questions on the ballot in ten states would help Harris and other Democrats. The logic was twofold. First, the ballot questions would raise the salience of abortion, an issue where many Democrats thought their party had an advantage. Second, the ballot questions would increase turnout among supporters of legal abortion.
However, analyses of both exit polls and turnout data indicate that abortion was not particularly helpful to Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. The Washington Post reported that when asked which candidate they preferred on the abortion issue, exit polls found 49 percent of voters preferred Harris and 45 percent preferred Trump. In short, on the issue where Democrats invested the most time and money, voters preferred Harris’s position by a margin of only four percentage points.
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Furthermore, Trump’s gains in popular vote share in Nevada and Arizona, two swing states with abortion ballot questions, were broadly consistent with his popular vote gain nationally. Additionally, supporters of legal abortion hoped that placing abortion in the ballot in Florida would make the Sunshine State competitive for Democrats. However, Donald Trump and Senator Rick Scott cruised to easy victories. Additionally, Trump’s gain in the popular vote share in Florida was nearly 5 points, as compared to only 3.4 percentage points nationwide.
At some level this is unsurprising. Since Dobbs there has been little backlash against pro-life elected officials. In fact, every pro-life Governor who signed a strong pro-life law has been re-elected. Some commentators have argued that the state ballot questions allowed people to “split their ticket.” They could vote to keep abortion legal in their state while prioritizing other issues when voting for president. While there might be some truth to this, it also true that the Democratic Party’s extreme position on abortion is out of step with public opinion. Indeed, Harris’s opposition to conscience rights and support for taxpayer funding for abortion may well have done her more harm than good with swing voters.
LifeNews Note: Michael J. New is an assistant professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_J_New
