The COVID States Project #89: The Dobbs Decision, Support for Abortion, and 2022 Voting

KEY TAKEAWAYS● Overall support for abortion across all nine scenarios increased following the Dobbs decision, with increases ranging from 1 to 5 percentage points. Among respondents for whom the abortion issue is “extremely important”, the corresponding increases were larger, ranging from 2 to 8 percentage points.● Support for abortion increases or remains the same between the pre- and post-Dobbs periods for all nine scenarios, regardless of intent to vote, but increases modestly more consistently among respondents who are not “very likely” to vote.● Across most demographic subgroups, we see little change in the overall probability of voting following the Dobbs decision. There are three exceptions – men, rural residents, and respondents with a high school education or less - each of whom are statistically significantly less likely to say that they are “very likely” to vote in the 2022 midterm election following the Dobbs announcement.● Overall, we find that individuals who consider abortion to be an “extremely important” issue are substantially more likely to support Democrats retaining control of both houses of Congress. These gaps, in turn, increase modestly following the Dobbs announcement. For the House of Representatives, the gaps prior to and following the Dobbs announcement are 11 and 14 points in favor of Democrats, respectively. For the Senate election, the corresponding gaps are 12 and 13 points in favor of Democrats, pre- and post-Dobbs, respectively.● In the 13 states with so-called “trigger laws” that automatically imposed restrictions or prohibitions on abortion following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, public opinion moved in the opposing direction as public policy – that is, toward greater support for abortion across the nine scenarios – by 3 to 9 percentage points. Such increases were even larger among respondents in those states who indicated that abortion was “extremely important”, with maximum increases in support of 12 to 14 percentage points.