VoteCast is a survey of more than 115,000 registered voters in all 50 states conducted between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5. It’s intended to be “the most accurate picture possible of who has voted, and why,” according to the AP.
About 1 in 4 of the polled voters said abortion was the “single most important” factor to their vote, though that number was higher among Democrats, young women, Black adults and Hispanic adults.
Abortion rights referendums passed in seven states on Tuesday, including Missouri and Arizona, where state bans were overturned. Vice President Kamala Harris made reproductive rights a cornerstone of her campaign, but the VoteCast results reinforce earlier surveys that indicated economic concerns were the foremost issue in the election.
Tuesday’s was the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. During Trump’s first term as president, he nominated three Supreme Court justices who later joined the 2022 ruling that eliminated women’s constitutional right to abortion care.
Mike Islami, 20, voted for Trump in Madison, Wisconsin, where he’s a full-time student. He said abortion is “a woman’s right” that “was definitely in the back of my mind” when he cast his ballot.
“I don’t think much is going to change” about abortion access during Trump’s second term, he said. “I believe his policy is that he’s just going to give it back to the states, and from there, they could decide how important it was.”
The survey found that the percentage of voters who said abortion was the most important factor in their vote was similar in states that had abortion measures on the ballot and states without them.
When voters cast their ballots, they were more motivated by economic anxiety and the cost of filling up their gas tanks, housing, and food, according to the survey results. Trump won those voters as much in hotly contested states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as in reliably red states.
Glen Bolger, a Republican campaign strategist, said the 2022 election results demonstrated that Republican candidates are better off talking about the economy and the cost of living than they are about abortion.
This year, Trump voters who supported abortion rights amendments may have decided to take Trump “at his word that he was not going to support a national ban,” Bolger said. In casting their vote for Trump, he said, those supporters may have thought, “Let’s elect him to deal with the cost of living and health care and gasoline and everything else.”
The VoteCast survey found stronger support for abortion ballot initiatives from female voters: 72% of women in Nevada, 69% in Arizona, 62% in Missouri.
Erica Wallace, 39, of Miami, voted for Harris and in favor of an abortion rights ballot measure in Florida, which fell just short of the 60% threshold needed to amend the state constitution.
