Why abortion didn't lead Democrats to victory in the 2024 election

In the run-up to the 2024 election, many observers — from political scientists to think tanks, from pollsters to opinion writers — believed abortion would buoy Democrats to electoral victory. While some issued words of caution, others believed it was a "sleeper" issue that would ultimately turn out women, particularly young women, in support of Democrats.

But a closer look at the data reveals that, while Americans are generally supportive of abortion rights, there was little evidence to show that abortion was going to end up mattering more than other issues, like the economy and immigration, and even less evidence that it would be a more motivating issue than it was in the 2022 midterms, which took place just months after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Generally speaking, Americans are supportive of abortion rights. When asked a standard polling question about whether abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in all cases or illegal in most cases, majorities of Americans typically say that it should be legal in all or most cases. And we saw that support show up in the 2024 election results: Six states* passed ballot measures that enshrined abortion rights in their state constitutions, and these measures significantly outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in every state they were on the ballot.

But while the percentage of voters who say abortion should be legal in all or most cases has grown since before the Dobbs decision, we've seen little change in voters' views of the issue since the 2022 election.**

If we dig a little deeper into the polling, there's been essentially no change in the percentage of voters who say abortion should be legal in all circumstances. In an average of polls conducted in September and October 2021, 29 percent of respondents said abortion should be legal in all circumstances — exactly the same as in an average of polls conducted in September and October 2024. On the other hand, the average percentage of respondents who say abortion should be legal in most circumstances grew from 29 percent in 2021 to 35 percent in 2024, suggesting that while people may be somewhat more supportive of abortion rights than they were before Dobbs, they do still support some restrictions.

Polling before the 2024 election did seem to show an increasing share of voters saying abortion was their top issue — on average, even more than in the months preceding the 2022 midterms. According to YouGov/The Economist's weekly tracking survey, there was a slow but steady increase in the number of registered voters choosing abortion as their top priority over the course of the campaign, from around 5 percent in the summer of 2023 to around 10 percent before the election.

But 10 percent is still relatively low compared with other major issues in the election. The percentage of respondents choosing an issue related to the economy*** in the same surveys averaged 39 percent in polls conducted in October 2024, much higher than the percentage saying abortion was their top issue, which averaged 9 percent in October.

And the increase in Americans prioritizing abortion may be an artifact of a well-known quirk of political polling: partisans forming their political opinions based on what trusted elites are saying. In other words, the Harris campaign's focus on abortion may have made Democratic voters more likely to say abortion was an important issue to them. Indeed, if we break down the YouGov/The Economist polling numbers by party, we see that abortion's increasing prioritization as an issue in 2024 was driven almost entirely by self-identified Democrats.

In the run-up to both the 2022 and 2024 elections, there were slight increases in the number of independents ranking abortion as their top issue. But the substantial growth among Democrats prioritizing abortion seems to have been the main driver of the change in the topline in 2024: In October 2022, around 9 percent of Democrats said it was the most important issue, compared with around 16 percent in October 2024.

One reason people may not have considered abortion to be a particularly urgent issue is that they didn't buy Democrats' arguments that Republicans would further restrict abortion access. Many voters took President-elect Donald Trump at his word when he said he didn't want to implement a national ban: In an October survey from Data for Progress, 52 percent of likely voters said they thought Trump "believes that abortion legislation should be left up to the states," while only 33 percent said they thought he "believes that there should be an abortion ban nationally."

And while a total national abortion ban is extremely unpopular (in the typical poll, less than 10 percent say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances), many Americans were fine with Trump's stated position of letting states determine their own abortion laws. In a YouGov/Economist poll from January 2023, Americans were split on the issue, with 42 percent saying that abortion laws should be decided nationally and 38 percent saying they should be left to the states.**** And early on in the primary campaign, Trump was floating the idea of a 15- or 16-week national abortion ban, which is a much more palatable position to Americans than a total ban. In polls conducted in 2024 that asked about a 15- or 16-week abortion ban, an average of 44 percent of voters said they supported such a ban, while 47 percent opposed it.

But also, people didn't seem especially motivated to vote on abortion rights, even in states where they were directly at stake. Despite Democratic hopes that abortion-related ballot measures might draw more people to the polls, turnout in states with an abortion-related ballot measure was 64.6 percent of the voting-eligible population — not much different than the national turnout rate of 63.9 percent. And while turnout was about 2.1 percentage points lower nationally than it was in 2020, in states with abortion-related ballot measures, turnout was down 2.9 points from 2020. Voters who live in states with abortion restrictions didn't seem particularly motivated either: In states that banned abortion at some point before fetal viability, turnout was 62.2 percent — down 2.3 points from 2020.

Despite all this, one big question remains: how abortion might impact future elections, if at all. The issue still resonates with Democratic voters, who are behind a lot of the movement in polls toward a more abortion-friendly position. The Dobbs decision and its aftermath also moved voters against a total ban: On average, in 2021, 12 percent of voters said abortion should be illegal in all cases, but by September and October 2024, that number had dropped to 7 percent.

In the end, the importance of abortion to voters may depend on how the Trump administration treats the issue. If Trump and congressional Republicans attempt to enact federal restrictions on abortion, it could raise the issue's profile among independents, especially in a pro-Democratic midterm environment. But if the status quo prevails, we may continue to see abortion rights take a backseat to issues voters see as more pressing, like the economy.

Footnotes

*Seven if you count New York, which expanded its equal-protection clause to include "sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy." Supporters have argued that this covers abortion rights, but the protective language isn't as clear-cut as in other states.

**For this article, we used loess to calculate simplified polling averages as the lines of best fit, unless otherwise specified.

***Issues related to the economy named in the surveys are "jobs and the economy," "taxes and government spending" and "inflation/prices."

****Interestingly, this flies in the face of other polling that has found Americans strongly oppose the Dobbs decision (which left abortion laws up to the states). This difference could be due to the framing of the specific questions. However, if given a choice between having "each state make its own laws on abortion" and having "the federal government restore abortion access," voters preferred federal protections by 15 points in an October ABC News/Ipsos poll.