By: Saira Afzal
Illustrated by: Sylvain Chan, Suchita Thepkanjana
On 24 June 2022, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, overruling historic decisions – paved by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion. Authority over regulating abortion returned to state-level representatives. Polling predicted that the issue of reproductive rights would play a significant, if not defining role in the 2024 elections.
Yet Trump won. The presidential race wasn’t even close. How did Harris lose? Do American voters care about women’s reproductive rights? What is the average American voter’s opinion on abortion? And how should Democrats approach the voting gender gap going forward?
J. Ann Selzer’s poll on 3 November produced a rather explosive result, projecting +3 percentage points in Harris’ favour in Iowa, a state that had been written off by Dems due to its Republican majority in 2016 and 2020. The reason for this poll result? Selzer predicted both older and younger women would come out in unprecedented numbers to protect their reproductive rights against a federal abortion ban.
Before the election, I would have argued this poll was symptomatic of a larger movement happening across America, whereby women of all ages gravitated toward the Democratic party to fight for their reproductive rights. Post-election, this is still somewhat true; according to preliminary exit poll data, white college-educated women did not shift further Republican compared to 2020. Overall, women aged 18-29 preferred Harris 58% to 40%. The gender gap – driven by young, white, and Latino men voting for Trump and young women voting for Harris – was a staggering 32-point gap in youth voting. Black women were the most reliable Democrat voter demographic, with Harris winning this group by 85 points.
However, there was a rightwards shift among all demographics, including women and people of colour. Although women aged 18-29 preferred Harris, they also shifted to the right this election, shifting 15 points rightward since 2018. The shift rightwards for young men between 2018-2024 is even more pronounced, shifting nearly 30 points right. Both Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016 did better among women than Harris, by a margin of 5 and 3 points respectively. To be clear, women voters did shift towards the Democratic party overall, but the shift was modest. The number of women voters turning out for the Democrats actually fell 3 points from 2020. Strikingly, Harris didn’t do well with the traditionally Democratic-leaning Latino voters, as Trump gained a significant number of Latino male voters. In addition, Trump did better with young voters, both male and female, compared to 2020. Overall, the gender gap in voting was “big but not unusual”, according to AP.
This doesn’t suggest that reproductive rights are not important to the electorate, or that banking on the gender gap is a defeated strategy. This election, elected officials weren’t the only thing on the ballot paper. Missourians voted for an amendment that enshrined abortion rights into their constitution, after being the first state to enforce an abortion ban post-Dobbs. Arizona voters approved an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution too. So did Maryland voters, and New York voters. Colorado did the same, while also voting to allow public funding to be used for abortion care. In Florida, 5.8 million people voted to repeal the abortion ban, but the amendment did not pass as it required 60% approval (57% approval was received).
Pro-life views do not represent the majority view in America. One of Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz’s messages throughout the campaign was that ‘the government ought to stay out of your personal lives’. He continuously emphasised how a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy ought to be a decision between a doctor and a patient, and that the government has no right to interfere with such a decision. Out of every message we’ve seen in Kamala’s 16-week campaign, this was the one of the most compelling slogans the Dems came out with because it reflects the attitude of the regular American voter (see Des Moines register interviews with Iowan voters). Following this slogan’s argument, even the average Alabama voter believes abortion should be legal. The Democrat campaign video ads, depicting a woman dying from pregnancy complications and being denied an abortion to save her life, reflects a very real and salient situation happening across America. We ought not to believe the Republican insistence that a federal abortion ban would be popular. Americans still believe, at the very least, that the government shouldn’t make choices about your body.
The repeal of Roe v. Wade invoked a deeper, philosophical, and fundamental debate regarding negative liberties and the role of the government in the personal sphere. Robert Nozick, an American libertarian philosopher, argued for ‘individual sovereignty’ (essentially the right to complete bodily autonomy) and a minimal state. Though Nozick extends this argument to the issue of property rights and a debate on taxation, this core belief of minimal state and individual autonomy is the foundation upon which America was built on.
With the abortion ban, women are not free even in the negative sense, let alone able to control their futures i.e. career trajectories, prospering in education, taking on leadership roles. This is why the Harris-Walz message on not letting the government meddle in your personal lives hits the core issue perfectly: it is not simply about protecting womens’ hard-fought rights but a larger question on the extent to which governments should be allowed to interfere in personal affairs such as in relationships, sex, and family affairs. The abortion ban symbolised a slippery slope into letting the government interfere even further into the personal sphere, regulating in unwanted areas and restricting further freedoms.This is why I believe Walz’s message perfectly underlines the average American voter’s stance on government interference; no one thinks the government should be dictating a medical decision.
Let me be clear: from J.D Vance’s weird personality and his various unsavoury comments, Tony Hinchcliffe’s insensitive Puerto Rico ‘joke’ at Madison Square Garden, Trump’s disastrous performance on debate night, coupled with multiple incoherent ramblings at different rallies, to an impromptu dance trance at a town hall, and other unbelievable happenings, Trump ran the worst presidential campaign we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes. You’d think the ‘Epstein tapes’ would have moved the needle, or Trump’s incoherent economic plan effectively countered by Harris as a sales tax, or the internal strife and grievances plaguing the Trump campaign (according to Tim Alberta). Yet it did not.
The Democratic campaign had hoped that the issue of abortion would result in record turnout for Harris, but banking on the gender gap to earn electorate support has failed spectacularly. Across almost all demographics, we saw a shift in favour of Republicans. This wasn’t a shift based on any specific policy failure, but a systemic shift rightwards.
Despite all of this, seven states have voted to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution, which proves two things. One, reproductive rights is important to voters. This is evident from the states voting to enshrine abortion rights in their constitution regardless of Republicans or Democrats winning races in those states. Two, voters by-and-large reject a blanket abortion ban, or at the very least agree with Tim Walz’s golden rule to “mind your own damn business”. So Democrats would do well to remember that, at least in the area of reproductive rights, American voters are largely on the same page. The gender gap gamble didn’t pay off for the Harris-Walz presidency campaign, but in a post-Dobbs America, fighting for reproductive rights must happen primarily on a state-level to win women’s votes for Democrats in the House and Senate.
