In November’s presidential election, abortion may not turn out to be the deciding issue many Democrats hoped it would be, columnist Jason Riley wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week.
“Abortion animates liberal elites, but Democrats need working-class voters to prevail against Mr. Trump,” Riley stated in the Tuesday op-ed.
Democrats have been climbing in the polls since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden just over a month ago, Riley reported, but the race remains close. “[M]ost of the battleground match-ups remain within the polling margin of error,” he pointed out. “That speaks to the country’s deep political divisions.”
Riley noted that “the race remains close because of the millions of Americans who have had it with Democrats who want to raise taxes, erase the border and defund police,” and the numbers suggest those latter issues are more important to swing voters than abortion is.
“At the margin, abortion is a winning issue for the left,” Riley added:
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The country is broadly pro-choice—most people believe abortion should be all or mostly legal rather than all or mostly illegal. Still, a significant faction of the Democratic Party believes that there should be essentially no restrictions on abortion, a position that is rather unpopular. Highlighting liberal extremism could help neutralize the issue among moderates.
Also in his piece, Riley quoted Democratic strategist and political scientist Ruy Teixeira.
“Just because it’s a pro-choice country doesn’t mean it’s a pro-Democratic country,” Teixeira had told Riley. “It doesn’t mean that just by turning up the volume on abortion, Democrats will get a lot more votes than they would have received anyway.”
Recent polling shows that more voters trust Trump than Harris to tackle the economy and the border crisis – widely considered to be the top issues of the race.
Furthermore, significantly more voters view these issues as important factors in the 2024 election than voters who feel the same way about abortion.
According to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month, “Trump leads Harris by 9 points in trust to handle the economy and inflation alike,” ABC News reported.
“More than 85% of adults rate both of these as highly important in their vote for president, tops among 11 issues tested,” ABC added. “Trump also leads Harris, by 10 points, in trust to handle the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Seventy percent of respondents indicated that immigration was important to their vote.
While Harris “leads Trump by 12 points in trust to handle abortion,” ABC noted, a relatively smaller 59% of the poll’s respondents deemed abortion to be important in determining which candidate they vote for.
Readers with a Wall Street Journal subscription can read Riley’s full op-ed here.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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