The politics of abortion rights have shifted massively toward Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Nothing makes that clearer than the fact that the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, hemmed and hawed for months about whether he would vote in his home state of Florida to establish a constitutional right to an abortion.
Trump ultimately said he would vote no. But lots of other Republicans are arriving at a different decision.
A remarkable number are apparently about to do something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: vote for the right to an abortion.
Nearly a dozen states will feature ballot measures on abortion rights this November, and recent polls show that many more Republicans are prepared to vote for those rights than have been in recent years. The number could even approach a majority in some states, these polls suggest.
Polling on this is still limited, with more of the higher-quality polls in states that are also key to the battles for president and Senate. But just about all of them show GOP support for abortion rights measures outpacing states that had similar ballot measures in recent years.
An exit poll in Michigan in 2022 showed 14 percent of Republicans supported that state’s ballot measure, and that number went to 18 percent in neighboring Ohio in 2023.
Recent polls of the states holding 2024 ballot measures show Republican support between 28 and 54 percent.
The high water mark for these polls is in the West, in Arizona and Nevada. Recent Fox News polls show 50 percent of Arizona Republicans plan to vote for that state’s abortion rights amendment, while 54 percent of Nevada Republicans plan to do the same.
How you ask the question matters, and other surveys don’t show quite as many Arizona Republicans favoring that state’s measure; they have pegged the number at 28 percent, 30 percent and 40 percent. But all of those numbers far outpace what we saw in Michigan and Ohio. This is also a state with a history of a Republican Party that has often been significantly to the right of the national party.
The other key state to feature such a ballot measure is Florida. There, recent polls show the abortion rights amendment Trump ultimately opposed getting 35 percent and 36 percent of Republicans. (Notably, that might not be enough in Florida. Unlike most other states, ballot measures there need 60 percent overall support; these polls suggest it will be close.)
Polls of other states show similar levels of Republican support, including 32 percent in Missouri and more than 45 percent in South Dakota.
These are early polls, and support could ultimately fall. The language of these ballot measures also differs. In New York, for instance, the right to an abortion is included in a broader anti-discrimination ballot measure. Some states’ measures would provide no defined limit to when an abortion would be legal.
But most of the others, especially those in the key competitive states, protect the right to an abortion through fetal viability, which is similar to the standard set forth by Roe. Given opposition to Roe has so animated Republicans for years, the fact that so many Republicans would turn around and, just a few years later, support that effective standard is telling.
It also says something about how the antiabortion right has allowed this issue to get away from it.
As Trump has sought to keep these issues at arm’s length — he says he supports states’ rights but avoids getting into specifics — plenty on the left have expressed skepticism about his motives. They’ve wagered that he would still align with hard-line antiabortion activists and even sign a national ban if one came to his desk.
But Trump’s refusal to rhetorically toe those activists’ line over the past two years also matters. That can send a message to other Republicans, who get to make these decisions for themselves in their states.
What that could ultimately mean: lots of Republicans voting directly in favor of abortion rights, and these ballot measures performing even better than they did in 2022 and 2023.