Another data point suggests that overturning Roe would not ignite an overwhelming backlash against Republicans in 2022.
Another data point suggests that overturning Roe would not ignite an overwhelming backlash against Republicans in 2022.
A new poll from Quinnipiac — a pollster that skewed toward Democrats in 2020 — shows Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott crushing 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, 52 percent to 37 percent.
The survey is yet another sign that overturning Roe v. Wade would not spur the type of national political backlash against Republicans that many political pundits are predicting.
The Texas Heartbeat Act, a law banning almost all abortions later than six weeks of pregnancy, has been in effect since September 1. The law’s unusual enforcement mechanism of civil lawsuits was designed to evade pre-enforcement challenges in court; it would not be necessary in a post-Roe world. But the law has nevertheless given the country a glimpse of what a post-Roe America — in which states would be allowed to pass laws protecting unborn life — might look like.
Texans oppose some aspect of the Texas abortion law: It lacks an exception for abortions later than six weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape, and the law’s enforcement mechanism polls very poorly. Nonetheless, the Republican governor who signed the bill into law has not taken a hit in the polls.
In fact, the Quinnipiac poll finds that voters still prefer Governor Abbott to O’Rourke on the issue of abortion, 49 percent to 41 percent.
While the Texas abortion law has a couple of unpopular features, O’Rourke himself has also staked out a deeply unpopular and extreme position on abortion. The Texas Democrat supports taxpayer-funding of elective abortions, and he co-sponsored a radical abortion bill that would enshrine in federal law a nearly unlimited nationwide right to kill a baby throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
Despite the fact that most abortions have effectively been illegal in Texas since September 1, only 9 percent of Texas voters tell Quinnipiac that abortion is the “most urgent” issue. Nearly four times as many voters say the Texas-Mexico border is the most pressing issue.
“Asked to choose the most urgent issue facing Texas today, the Texas-Mexico border tops the list (33 percent), followed by the economy (11 percent), abortion (9 percent), COVID-19 (8 percent), and election laws (8 percent),” Quinnipiac reports.
The Quinnipiac Texas poll was conducted December 2 to December 6, immediately after the December 1 oral argument in the Dobbs case that may result in the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
It’s just one poll, but the November 2021 election results present stronger evidence that overturning Roe would not cause an overwhelming nationwide backlash against Republicans. A heavily Hispanic Texas house district that Biden carried by 14 points just elected a Republican state representative by 2 points.
And in Virginia, a state that Biden carried by 10 points in 2020, Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost by 2 points. When the Texas abortion law took effect on September 1, McAuliffe was leading Republican Glenn Youngkin by 5.2 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, and McAuliffe’s campaign spent nearly $4 million on TV ads warning that the Supreme Court would likely overturn Roe and Youngkin would ban abortion. But McAuliffe’s abortion attack was a dud: The CNN exit poll found that 8 percent of Virginia voters said abortion was the most important issue in the race, and three out of five voters who named abortion as the top issue voted for Youngkin.
Politico reported on Sunday that even some Democratic strategists are acknowledging that overturning Roe would not help them all that much in the 2022 elections: “Privately, several Democratic strategists have suggested the usefulness of any decision on abortion next year will be limited, and some may advise their clients not to focus on abortion rights at all.”
Julie Roginsky, who has worked for the abortion-rights group EMILY’s List and as an adviser to New Jersey’s Democratic governor Phil Murphy, told Politico:
Every time we’ve run on issues like women’s health, they have polled through the roof. But . . . they have been completely ineffective at getting voters to the polls. There’s a difference between something that polls really well, and something that gets voters to the polls. And that is what a lot of people are confusing.
Of course, the 2021 results in Virginia and Texas do not prove that there will not be a backlash against Republicans if Roe falls. But if there’s going to be a backlash against Republicans, it seems more likely it would be limited to specific candidates or specific states that propose or enact abortion laws that go further than public opinion will sustain. As a 2019 National Review editorial advised pro-life legislators: “Public opinion cannot be ignored in a democratic republic, and it would be a grave error to insist that no lives should be saved until all lives can be saved.”
For now, however, it appears unlikely that the fall of Roe would result in a Democratic takeover in Texas.