The latest from Emerson polling: “Ohio is evenly split between those that oppose (50%) and those that support (50%) its abortion law, prohibiting abortion after six weeks or when a fetus has a heartbeat, with exceptions to save a mother’s life, but not for cases of rape or incest.”
The Emerson poll finds Ohio GOP governor Mike DeWine, who signed that six-week abortion limit into law, leading Democrat Nan Whaley by 17 points (50 percent to 33 percent).
The same survey finds Ohio GOP Senate candidate J. D. Vance leading Democrat Tim Ryan 44 percent to 40 percent.
Several polls have now shown DeWine with a big lead while Vance and Ryan are in a close race. As I noted last month, the abortion issue wouldn’t seem to be a factor that explains the polling differential in the gubernatorial and Senate races in Ohio:
Both DeWine and Vance are pro-life. DeWine is the governor who signed into law Ohio’s ban on abortion after a baby’s heartbeat is detectable about six weeks into pregnancy, with an exception for when the mother’s life or physical health is endangered but not when the pregnancy is the result of rape. If the abortion issue were a decisive factor for any given voter, it’s hard to see why that voter would cast a ballot against Vance and for DeWine.
Ever since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade at the end of June, political observers have been trying to detect how much the issue might help Democrats in November, and there have been a few data points suggesting that Republican prospects have been diminished over the last couple months. The congressional GOP’s 2.3-point lead over Democrats on the generic ballot has turned into a 0.5-point lead for Democrats according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls. Republicans have not met expectations in a couple of congressional special elections. And at the beginning of August, Kansas voters (by 59 percent to 41 percent) rejected a referendum that would have held a right to abortion is not protected by the state constitution.
A number of Senate GOP candidates have seen lackluster polling as well. But the strength of pro-life GOP governors in those same battleground states suggests that the Senate GOP’s diminished electoral prospects may have more to do with candidate quality than abortion politics. It’s not just Ohio. In Georgia, Republican governor Brian Kemp signed into law a heartbeat act that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is endangered. But Kemp leads Democrat Stacey Abrams by 4.2 points in the RCP average of polls, while Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker (who has a lot of baggage) trails Democratic senator Raphael Warnock by 4.4 points.