From 538: How Americans Feel About Abortion And Contraception

From July, so this is a bit dated.

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It’s been more than two weeks since the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that there is no consitutional right to abortion, overturning the precedent set in 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision. This has set off a scramble across the country, as some states move to restrict legal access to abortion while others seek to expand it.

Polls show that Americans largely disapprove of the court’s decision, and the latest FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos survey found that Americans are now more likely to prioritize abortion as a major issue — even if it still isn’t their top concern. Conducted shortly after the court overturned Roe,1 FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos once again interviewed the same 2,000 or so Americans from our previous two survey waves using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel. And from a list of 20 topics, the more than 1,500 adults who responded ranked abortion as the fourth-most important issue facing the country, with 19 percent rating it as a leading concern.2 This marked a notable increase from the 9 percent who ranked abortion as a top issue in our last survey released in early June.

Despite the clear uptick in concern about abortion, however, the issue still substantially trailed three other issues: inflation or increasing costs, crime or gun violence and political extremism or polarization. Inflation is far and away Americans’ leading worry, as more than 60 percent named it as one of their top issues. Meanwhile, concern over crime and gun violence fell to 34 percent after reaching the low 40s in June, while concerns about polarization and extremism grew to 33 percent.

Democrats and independents were especially likely to say abortion ranked as a top issue for the country.3 The share of Democrats who named abortion more than doubled, from 13 percent in our previous wave to 27 percent in our latest wave, while the percentage of independents who mentioned abortion jumped from 8 percent to 17 percent. Republicans, too, were more worried about the issue, but their share only increased from 8 percent to 13 percent.

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