CNN commentator boldly predicts Trump has already lost Arizona after abortion ban
CNN political commentator Margaret Hoover argued President Trump would lose the battleground state of Arizona because of a recent controversial abortion ruling in the state.
The Arizona Supreme Court issued a ruling on Tuesday reverting the state back to a 160-year-old, pre-statehood law that outlaws abortions in nearly all circumstances and criminalizes abortions.
The ruling comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal poll conducted before the ruling which found a majority of Arizonans sided with President Biden over Trump on the issue of abortion.
On CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Tuesday, Hoover argued the ban was unpopular with Republican voters in the state and would "absolutely impact the presidential election."
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"This has Republicans now on their back feet. There is no way Donald Trump is going to carry this state," she continued.
Biden narrowly won Arizona in the 2020 election. A Fox News poll conducted at the beginning of March put Trump ahead of the president by four points in the battleground state.
Hoover, who is married to Democratic congressional candidate and former CNN senior political analyst John Avlon, insisted that the Arizona ruling showed how Trump's defense of states' rights on abortion could backfire in the election.
"How's it going? It’s not going to go so well for him in Arizona," Hoover argued, denouncing the "draconian" law without exceptions for rape or incest.
Nationwide, a record number of voters think abortion should be legal in most cases, a recent Fox News poll found. Support for abortion has surged since April 2022, before Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court.
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Trump issued a statement on abortion rights on Monday, one day before the Arizona Supreme Court ruling.
In a video posted to his social media platform, Trump argued that abortion rights should be a state issue decided by the "will of the people."
"The states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land – in this case, the law of the state," Trump said. "Many states will be different. Many states will have a different number of weeks…at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people."
His statement drew the ire of some pro-life activists, who believed it was a victory for Democrats.
Fox News' Jamie Joseph, Paul Steinhauser and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.