Kamala Harris, and Democrats overall, made killing unborn babies in abortions the center of their campaigns in 2024 — a move that did not end up galvanizing enough pro-abortion voters to deliver Harris a victory over now-President-elect Donald Trump.
Democrats pulled out all the stops: allowing free abortions outside the DNC, fear-mongering about miscarriage care, putting abortion measures on the ballot in ten states, trotting out pro-abortion celebrities, touring the nation promising to restore Roe and championing abortion throughout pregnancy. But in the face of a floundering economy and a porous southern border, abortion did not end up being a strong enough issue to tip the scales in Democrats’ favor.
“Abortion rights, the issue that fueled Democratic wins in 2022, on ballot initiatives and in special elections, proved less potent this year,” left-leaning CNN observed. “Harris performed much worse than Biden among voters who said they thought abortion should be legal in most cases — even though the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in between the two elections.”
Polling from CNN found that Biden won voters in who believe abortion should be legal in most cases by 38 points in 2020. And while the share of the electorate that holds that opinion has increased from 26 percent four years ago to 33 percent this year, Harris only won that group by 3 points.
“It’s a result that suggests the issue wasn’t the deciding factor for many of those voters — even though Democrats had succeeded in the 2022 midterms, special elections and more by highlighting the GOP’s role in ending Roe v. Wade’s national abortion rights protections,” CNN continues.
Exit polls from various outlets show that voters are most concerned about immigration and the economy and also trust Trump to handle those issues more than Harris. Abortion in exit polls was typically listed as the third most important issue to voters, with voters trusting Harris to handle the issue more than Trump.
For example, Fox News’s exit poll finds that 39 percent of voters said the economy is their number one issue followed by 2-in-10 voters who said immigration, and 11 percent who said abortion. Likewise, the Associated Press’s (AP) exit poll shows that about 39 percent of voters said the economy and jobs are their number one issue and 20 percent said immigration is their top issue.
NBC News exit polls reveal 53 percent of voters favor Trump to handle immigration while a minority 46 percent of voters say they prefer Harris on immigration.
Abortion was a much more potent issue for female voters, with approximately 20 percent of women listing it as their top issue compared to 8 percent of men, NBC News’ exit poll finds. However, while exit polling in swing states showed that Harris was more popular with women, she achieved slimmer margins with them in some states than Biden did in 2020. Trump notably led for the third time with white women, in spite of Harris’s grand abortion appeal.
“The Harris campaign tried, with good reason, to convince white women that their future was at stake. Trump is all but guaranteed to oversee a further rollback in reproductive rights, and the president-elect has also openly flirted with a federal ban on abortion,” left-leaning The New Republic assessed:
And yet that was not a winning message for white women. A recent Times/Siena showed that the majority of white women, like their white male counterparts, saw inflation and the economy as their top voting issue. Abortion was second, and immigration was third. To be sure, there is a notable age split here: Gen Z women only went 36 percent for Trump, women aged 30 to 44 went 41 percent for Trump, women aged 45 to 64 went 48 percent for Trump, and women over 65 backed the former president 45 percent.
Democrats thought abortion measures on the ballot in ten states could potentially boost turnout for them and help Harris clinch more votes, but that strategy ultimately proved less fruitful than they had hoped.
“The hope was to galvanize non-partisan voters to not only vote in favor of abortion access but also vote for the Democrats down the ticket. But once Donald Trump snagged the presidential spot again, with Republicans also taking the Senate majority, it became clear that while abortion access was prioritized in some red states, like Missouri and Montana, that didn’t render a blue victory,” left-leaning Salon analyzed.
Indeed, deep-red Missouri overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump 58.5 percent to 40.1 percent , while also narrowly passing a radical amendment that enshrines the right to abortion into the state constitution and erases its current pro-life restriction.
Another example is battleground state Nevada. Trump was projected to win Nevada early Wednesday morning, but voters also passed an amendment (which will be voted on again in 2026 before it is added to the constitution) to enshrine the right to abortion into its constitution.
Ultimately, seven of the abortions measures passed, including in Arizona, Montana, Missouri, Nevada, and in reliably blue states like Colorado, Maryland, and New York. Three of the measures failed, including in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
“And though Democrats had insisted that abortion ballot initiatives in Arizona and other swing states would help drive progressive turnout and give their candidates an edge, the measures had a limited impact even when they passed overwhelmingly — and may have even helped Republicans by giving voters a ‘release valve’ for their feelings on the issue,” Politico reported. “In a swath of states, including Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Montana, a majority of voters backed both abortion-rights ballot measures and GOP candidates with records of opposing abortion, including Trump.”
