Vice President Kamala Harris has worked hard to center her presidential campaign around the issue of abortion, but polling suggests it is not a top-five issue for voters.
Just over a week into her presidential bid, Harris and her campaign have hyped abortion as the leading issue via ads, a memo, and speeches Harris has delivered. Yet, July’s Harvard-Harris poll shows that abortion is not a top five issue, and the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot — another issue the campaign is trying to play — is not even a top-20 issue.
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When asked to pick “the most important issues facing the country today,” the three most popular answers were “prices and inflation (37 percent), immigration (33 percent), and economy and jobs (27 percent). They were followed by health care (17 percent), crime and drugs (16 percent) and “women’s rights,” or abortion (16 percent).
In a memo to interested parties last week, in which she cherry-picked figures from polls to claim Harris could beat Trump, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon worked to paint abortion as a leading issue. A key part of this strategy was citing a CNN poll from before the 2022 midterms about what voters say is the sixth-most important issue.
Abortion-rights protesters attend a rally, June 24, 2022, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
“Voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections,” O’Malley Dillon wrote. “In CNN’s 2022 pre-election poll, nearly three quarters of voters called abortion very important to their vote, and a majority of voters called it extremely important,” as the first source to back up her argument on page 3 of the memo.
“This trend continues in 2024, where 76% of voters have identified abortion as an important issue in this election, and nearly half of voters ranked it as very important. 57% of young people ages 18-29 identify abortion as a “major” factor in their vote, as do 55% of women,” she added, citing a YouGov/Economist survey.
She failed to mention that only 49 percent classified abortion as “very important,” down significantly from the 75 percent who said it was “very important” in the CNN poll from 20 months ago.
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What is more, when asked to pick the “most important” issue in the race, respondents in the YouGov/Economist poll O’Malley Dillon cited, just seven percent selected abortion, making it the sixth most important issue.
Inflation and prices ranked number one with (25 percent), immigration followed (13 percent), and jobs and the economy came next (12 percent). Healthcare garnered seven percent of the response, and climate change did, too.
In the memo, O’Malley Dillon also states that “upholding the rule of law” is another key issue where the campaign can make inroads with voters. The Harvard-Harris poll found January 6, 2021, was rated as the 22nd issue, with just four percent of the responses.
The Harvard-Harris poll surveyed 2,196 registered voters from July 26-28. The margin of error for the survey is ± 2.1 percent.
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