Shortly after Donald Trump adopted a states’ rights approach to abortion last month, he began wishcasting that the issue be”largely taken off the table.“
But new polling from the progressive consortium Navigator Research suggests Trump is wildly off the mark, a devastating blow to Trump on just about every measure of what he had hoped to accomplish by appointing states the ultimate arbiters of reproductive rights.
The survey showed that some 65% of voters now believe that Trump thinks abortion should be illegal in all or most cases—a 9-point increase since last September.
Additionally, 55% believe Trump would sign a national ban into law, with just 26% saying he would veto such a ban. Among Democrats, 72% believe that he would sign a ban into law, as well as pluralities of independents and Republicans, at 42% and 40% respectively. In other words, even across partisan lines voters are coming to a similar conclusion as Trump repeatedly dodges questions on whether he would veto a national abortion ban as president.
Things get worse for Trump when respondents were briefed about his extensive remarks on abortion, including his 2016 assertion that there must be “some form of punishment” for women having abortions, his constant bragging about being “proud” to have terminated Roe v. Wade, and his insistence that “states will determine” whether abortion will be banned.
After reviewing those remarks, the share of voters who believe Trump would sign a national abortion ban rises 7 points to 62%, while those believing he would veto a ban drops to 22%—a net change of -11 points.
Voters in the survey widely favor abortion being legal in all or most cases, at 61%, and 57% believe abortion should be legal nationwide, not determined by each state.
Trump has bloviated about abortion so extensively in broadcast interviews that the Biden campaign could easily use his own words to drive up the share of voters who believe he would sign a national ban. President Joe Biden is broadly viewed as pro-choice, with 70% saying that they believe he supports abortion being legal in all or most cases, an almost polar opposite view of voters’ conclusions about Trump.
And though the 2022 Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade came down during Biden’s presidency, voters hold Trump responsible by wide margins, with 62% calling him responsible and just 26% calling Biden responsible.
But the kicker in this poll was the addition of two questions that attempted to gauge which issues would drive the election. One asked which issue voters’ deemed most important when deciding their vote, while the other queried which candidate positions would be a deal breaker for them.
While 51% of voters cited inflation as their top issue and abortion ranked six out of 15 issues overall in the first question, abortion was the top deal breaker in the second question, with a 38% plurality saying a candidate holding an opposite view from their own would prevent them from voting for that candidate. So while inflation is top of mind for the majority of voters, abortion is poised to be a disruptive sleeper issue with outsized implications.
Trump has typically benefited in the past from voters viewing him as more socially liberal than traditional Republicans, particularly on the hot-button issue of abortion. One of the Biden campaign’s primary tasks is making sure that Trump doesn’t get a pass from voters on the abortion chaos he has unleashed on the country.
If this polling proves to be the leading edge of an emerging trend rather than an outlier, Trump is poised to suffer the wrath of voters for whom reproductive freedom is paramount.
