Abortion has become the most important issue in the November election for women under 30, according to a KFF poll, a notable change from late spring, before Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race.
Nearly 4 in 10 women under 30 surveyed in September and early October told pollsters that abortion is the most important issue for their vote. Only 20% mentioned abortion as their top issue when KFF conducted a similar survey in late May and early June.
The new poll found other changes among women voters that could benefit Harris, including a 24 percentage point increase in the number of women who said they were satisfied with their choice of candidates and a 19 point increase in the number of women who They said they were satisfied with their choice of candidates. more motivated to vote than in previous presidential elections. The changes suggest a significant decline among women in just a few months for former President Donald Trump.
“Things are looking worse for Donald Trump than they were in June,” said Ashley Kirzinger, director of polling methodology at KFF, a nonprofit health information organization that includes KFF Health News. “The fact that Harris was the Democratic presidential nominee energized women voters in a way that Biden’s candidacy had not.”
President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid on July 21, under pressure from Democratic Party leaders, after a faltering performance in a June debate against Trump that revived concerns about the 81-year-old’s fitness for a second term.
While women are more enthusiastic about voting for Harris than Biden, the election remains close. Harris has a 2.5-point lead in national polls, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. Other polls have found a wide gender divide in the election, with a majority of women backing Harris and a majority of men backing Trump.
Harris has long been one of the Democratic Party’s leading abortion rights advocates and has attacked Trump for appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who joined the 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wadethe historic 1973 opinion that guaranteed access to abortion nationwide. Since then, thirteen states have banned abortion with few exceptions, according to KFF.
Trump says the ruling simply returned the issue to the states, and although his positions have often changed, he recently vowed not to sign a national abortion ban. Harris says she would sign a law that would restore abortion rights nationwide.
The former president has made sometimes uncomfortable appeals to women voters.
“You will be protected and I will be your protector,” Trump told women voters at a September 23 rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania. “Women will be happy, healthy, safe and free. You will no longer think about abortion.”
The KFF poll found that Harris is gaining ground on Trump among women not only on the issue of abortion – an issue that the former president tries to downplay, recognizing its political danger – but also on economic issues, which Trump and his advisers consider one of your strongest arguments in favor of your decision. Return to the White House.
Multiple polls have shown that the economy remains a leading issue in the election, especially for black and Hispanic women. About 75% of KFF respondents said they worry “a lot” or “somewhat” about household expenses.
Inflation was the main problem for 36% of KFF respondents overall, while 13% identified abortion as their priority.
About 46% of women voters in the new survey said they trust Harris more than Trump to address household costs, while 39% trust the former president more. Sixteen percent said neither.
In KFF’s previous survey of women in the spring, respondents were almost evenly split on which party they trusted most to address rising household costs. About 40% said they did not trust either party.
On health care costs, Harris has a significant lead over Trump in the new poll: 50% trust her more on the issue, 34% trust Trump more, and 16% trust neither .
Kirzinger said black women especially prefer Harris on economic issues; For example, they trust the vice president 7 to 1 over Trump on inflation, he said.
According to the Census Bureau, more than half of American voters have been women in the last two national elections.
“A Democratic candidate needs to win a very high percentage of women and needs to excite the base, which is largely made up of women,” Kirzinger said. “What we saw in early June was that the Biden candidacy was not doing that. Now it appears the Harris campaign is doing this in multiple different ways; It’s not just abortion. It is her as a candidate that makes women more excited.”
The KFF survey was conducted from September 12 to October 1 among 649 women who had been surveyed in the spring, as well as a supplemental sample of 29 registered Black women voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 5 points.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF, an independent source of research, polling and health policy journalism. Learn more about KFF.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
