The CBS News Battleground Tracker poll says men (56 percent) are very enthusiastic about voting in the midterm elections. Women (44 percent), not so much. This contributes to the polls forecast that the Republicans will take control of the U.S. House of Representatives with a 230-205 majority.
The Associated Press reports, however, that many of the most vulnerable Democratic members of Congress, including many women, are hoping that the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Republican legislatures moves to severely restrict abortion, will hurt their challengers.
In addition to [Rep. Sharice] Davids [of Kansas], these incumbents include Reps. Angie Craig of Minnesota, Cindy Axne of Iowa, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia, and Susan Wilds of Pennsylvania. They all face Republican opponents who support the high court’s abortion ruling. Some are contending with rivals who back efforts to ban abortion in all circumstances, including when the mother’s life is at risk.
It’s unclear whether the focus on abortion alone may be enough to mean reelection for many of these Democrats, who are running at a time of high inflation and frustration with President Joe Biden’s performance.
“In a close, toss-up election, which I think all of these are, it can make a difference,” said national pollster Christine Matthews, a self-described moderate who has worked for Republicans. “It’s not going to be what drives everyone to make a vote choice, but it will drive some people to make a vote choice.”
This isn’t exactly encouraging news. After a half century of constitutionally protected reproductive freedom, I’d expect women to be in shock about the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which took that protection away. I’d expect them to be considerably more energized than men to go to the polls in November. I’d expect waves on unlikely women voters to become likely voters, and hundreds of thousands of Republican women to leave the party in anger.
But maybe it’s just a big yawn that will lead only “some people to make a vote choice.” Maybe inflation is more important.
Or maybe women are demoralized and that misleadingly shows up in the tracker poll as lack of enthusiasm. I don’t want to believe that Dobbs will have a barely perceptible impact on how people vote and identify by party. But if traditionally Republican or apathetic women are going to turn out in the midterms to support Democrats, there needs to be more than a messaging campaign. There needs to be an army of organizers that focuses on registering people to vote and going into Republican areas to help angry women network and find their political voice and power.
It’s too soon to look at those polls. Think of the seven stages of grief, as women process the loss of liberty they just suffered. Soon they will require permission from the government in several states just to leave their home state, with the state sticking its nose directly into their menstrual cycles. Shock and denial are going to give way to anger. That’s when the rubber will start to hit the road.
I hope better news is coming. It just can’t be that women will be forced to carry ectopic pregnancies, etc. I can well imagine an Alabama or even Wisconsin in which it’s difficult or impossible to get a surgical abortion in a “normal” situation. But it just cannot be possible that voters are going to tolerate such strict abortion bans that women are left to bleed out rather than offer them care. It just cannot be.
But yes. It won’t just happen. There needs to be organization around it.
I don’t know, the data is just incomplete and doesn’t make a lot of sense. These past years (since 2015) have completely upended my understanding of politics that I don’t try to predict anything anymore. The current economy doesn’t make a lot of sense either with a lot of conflicting data that makes it hard to really get a grip on what is happening.
Polling on Biden’s job approval is abysmal. And it’s not out of the ordinary for the generic ballot to be weird during the summer only to come out as expected by the fall. But it’s not just that Biden’s job approval is terrible and the GB is tied. It’s the undercurrents. 18-29 voters are giving him some of his lowest marks of any demographic in a lot of other polls (this one they’re 49-51 approve/disapprove), and yet on this poll they’re favoring Democrats by 40 points. That doesn’t make any sense. But we had Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorials basically amounting to exactly what we would predict if we just looked at Biden’s job approval.
Further, this group of elections are going to be a big experiment in how much candidate quality matters. The Republicans have picked some real stinkers. How much will it matter? It’s possible not much at all. If it wasn’t for the fate of the country remaining a democracy I might be more excited at all the data we’re gonna get…
What if I told you the “stinkier” the Republican candidate, the more those candidates actually align with their voters?
I would agree with you, but then they’re more likely to lose. We will see when we get to do the regressions after the voting is over.
Every single poll is absolutely useless and the only thing that matters is turnout.
This can be a winning issue on the margins as long as we keep asking Republican candidates about rape.
As of August 2, it looks like Kansas answered that question. And hopefully many other states will have the same answer.
I was about to make the same statement, but you beat me to the punch. Democrats would be stupid not to run on this. Better yet, frame the abortion issue in a broader campaign about Republican extremism and the Democratic Party’s fight to save democracy. Every candidate should say clearly: We can only pass such-and-such a law if we keep the House and gain at least two seats in the Senate.