Abortion a top election issue for nearly half of state voters, Spotlight PA poll shows

Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA

Photo Courtesy of Commonwealth Media Services

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HARRISBURG — Abortion is a top issue for nearly 50% of Pennsylvania voters when considering who to pick for president this November, a new Spotlight PA poll shows.

Feelings vary widely by party. Just 17% of Republican respondents identified abortion and reproductive health as one of the issues that matter the most to them this election cycle compared to a whopping 85% of Democrats.

Critically, 49% of those polled who aren’t registered to either major party picked abortion as a top issue. In the extremely tight race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, 5% of independent and third-party respondents said they were still undecided — making them a critical group in a state where the outcome will likely be decided by a slim margin.

The poll, which was conducted by the MassINC Polling Group between Sept. 12 and 18, asked 800 likely voters whether a variety of issues matter to them in the presidential race. Abortion ranked below the economy (69%), the future of democracy (60%), immigration policy (57%), and gun policy (51%).

“The economy is No. 1, and that’s the item where Donald Trump tends to do the best, and where, compared to Kamala Harris, he does quite well,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group. “I think if you’re the Harris campaign, you would prefer that the election be more about those other issues than about the economy.”

Harris’ campaign has centered its messaging on her commitment to protecting abortion access and reproductive rights. In the past month, half of the campaign’s 10 most expensive ad buys on Google platforms, such as YouTube, were on the topic.

Anne Wakabayashi, a Democratic political consultant with public relations firm BerlinRosen, said abortion is one of the party’s main messaging points this election cycle. That’s been the case consistently since conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — several appointed by Trump when he was president — overturned Roe v. Wade, putting fundamental decisions about abortion access in the hands of individual states.

The 2022 decision was unpopular among most of the likely voters surveyed by Spotlight PA — 54% said the court made the wrong decision, while 38% said it made the right one.

“We’re seeing these really extreme stories coming out of states with abortion bans. It’s deeply concerning for women, and it’s personal,” Wakabayashi said.

Trump, meanwhile, has tried to deflect attention from his record on the issue, saying on social media and at a recent campaign rally that women “will no longer be thinking about abortion” if he wins.

The issue isn’t just salient at the presidential level. In a push to maintain control of the state House and flip the state Senate, Democrats have used abortion access as a cudgel against Republican candidates, arguing that a GOP-controlled legislature will further restrict abortion.

In Pennsylvania, pregnancies can be ended up to 24 weeks gestation. Abortions can be performed after that cutoff if a pregnant person’s life or health is in danger.

Republican state lawmakers in recent years have advanced several measures that target abortion access, including a 20-week ban vetoed by former Gov. Tom Wolf and a proposal seeking to assert that the Pennsylvania Constitution does not grant any right relating to abortion. This election cycle, a vote on the latter measure has come back to haunt some Republicans in competitive reelection fights, including state Rep. Valerie Gaydos (R., Allegheny).

The Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee is running an ad highlighting Gaydos’ affirmative vote on that proposed constitutional amendment and calling her “an abortion extremist.”

In a recent interview with Spotlight PA, Gaydos decried “misleading” ads. A successful vote would have sent the issue to voters for consideration, giving them a chance to directly make their position heard, she said.

“There should be legislation that punishes flat-out lies,” Gaydos told Spotlight PA.

Wakabayashi said Democrats are particularly focused on the salience abortion has among independent women. Sixty percent of women unaffiliated with a major party who responded to the Spotlight PA poll identified abortion as a top issue. By comparison, only 40% of men who met the same criteria said the same.

In recent years Pennsylvania has seen a marked increase in the number of voters registered to no party or a third party.

“At the end of the day, voters are less convinced that a politician can do something about the economy in a significant way, but it’s really tangible how much legislators can do to either protect or harm abortion rights and that’s a real difference,” said Wakbayashi.

Age, race, income, and education level also correlate with voters’ focus on abortion this election cycle.

A greater proportion of non-white people surveyed picked abortion as a top issue compared to white respondents. The same dynamic was seen for those polled under 45 versus older respondents.

Read more results from the Spotlight PA poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.

Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso contributed reporting for this story.

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