WASHINGTON — Last week’s leaked draft opinion that would overturn the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling has potential impacts that reach beyond the courts and abortion laws. It was a bomb set off in the thick of 2022’s midterm campaign. And one doesn’t have to look hard to see how it could affect November’s vote, particularly in one important age demographic for Democrats: young voters.
Since the news broke, there has been a steady stream of reporting about polling data indicating that most Americans favor keeping abortion legal. That’s true, and the numbers have been stable for some time.
Recent data from the Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of Americans want to keep abortion legal with only some exceptions and that only 8 percent of Americans want abortion to be completely illegal. But the strength of those opinions varies dramatically by age group.
Among the youngest group of voters, those 18 to 29, three-quarters say abortion should be legal with only some exceptions, while 25 percent say it should be mostly illegal with only some allowances.
Among voters 65 or older, only 54 percent believe abortion should be legal with only some exceptions, while 44 percent believe it should be mostly illegal.
That’s a 20-point gap on the question of legality, and that matters at election time, because those groups of voters don’t turn out in the same numbers. Voters 65 or older are one of the most consistent voter groups in the U.S. They tend to go to the polls in large numbers for all sorts of elections, from presidential races to city council contests.
But the numbers look very different for the youngest voter segment. The 18- to 29-year-old group, which most strongly supports keeping abortion legal, tends to have pretty robust turnouts for presidential races, but the numbers drop off for midterms.
Since 2008, voters 18 to 29 have made up 17 percent to 19 percent of the electorate in presidential races, according to exit polls. But in midterms, since 2010, the figure falls to about 12 percent to 13 percent, about 6 percentage points lower. That can make a big difference in close elections, and it can be a special challenge for Democrats.
Younger voters are more likely to vote Democratic for a few reasons. They tend to be more socially liberal on issues such as LGBTQ rights and how to handle climate change, and as a group they are more racially and ethnically diverse than the nation as a whole. Statistically speaking, members of minority groups are more likely to vote Democratic than non-Hispanic whites.
Add it up, and in midterm elections Democrats can sometimes feel like they are fighting with one arm tied behind their backs as they struggle to turn out one of their most supportive voter blocs.
Before last week leak, the long-term trend looked as though it was on track to continue this year. Younger voters were strongly behind the Democrats but not especially interested in this year’s midterm elections, according to the latest NBC News poll, especially compared to older voters.
The poll found that Democrats, indeed, held a massive 21-point advantage with voters 18 to 34 when it comes to the party they want to control Congress. Republicans held a smaller but still solid advantage among 65-plus voters of 8 points.
But the election interest figures paint a different picture.
The latest poll asked voters to rate their enthusiasm for November's elections on a scale of 1 to 10, with high interest being a 9 or a 10. Fewer than 3 in 10 younger voters scored in the high interest range, but more than 70 percent of 65-plus voters did — a gap of more than 40 percentage points.
The question, after last week, is how firm those numbers are exactly. Could an opinion that would overturn a nearly 50-year precedent in Roe be enough to alter the picture? We may be about to find out.
November may seem a long way off, but Election Day is only six months away, and normally we would be entering the period in which the “issue terrain” — the topics that campaigns are going to focus on — is hardening into its final form.
But if the Supreme Court issues a final opinion that looks like last week’s draft and overturns Roe, the midterms may be about to get a serious shock to the system that could have big impacts not only on the "issue terrain," but also on who goes out to vote.
