A Gallup First: More Americans Pro-Life Than Pro-Choice
Friday, May 15th, 2009 at
1:19 pm
For the first time since the Gallup organization has been polling this issue (1995), more Americans consider themselves pro-life than pro-choice, and the percentage of pro-life designations is the highest ever.
(Click on the picture for the source article.) Gallup calls this jump a "significant shift". Increases were found among the individual demographics Republicans, conservatives, moderates, Protestants, Catholics, men and women.
Filed under: Abortion • Doug • Polls
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Did they ask the follow up question: DO you favor banning abortion or do you think it should remain illegal?
I know plenty of pro-life people (myself included) who don’t want to criminalize abortion.
Aha, I found out myself. The poll goes on to show…
In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%).
In other words, nowhere near a majority want to criminalize abortion altogether. I wonder if they probed it deeper what results would they turn up?
Indeed, the breakdown for that question is rather broad; all or some. It would be interesting to see specific exceptions and how they would poll.
To me the real question in all of this is “will it affect who you vote for?”
If not, then it doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately I didn’t see this in the survey. However, there is this
“The source of the shift in abortion views is clear in the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey. The percentage of Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) calling themselves “pro-life” rose by 10 points over the past year, from 60% to 70%, while there has been essentially no change in the views of Democrats and Democratic leaners.”
What this tells me is that Republicans will insist more on their candidates being strongly pro-life. More, they may try to make pro-life the centerpiece of their campaigns, at the expense of jobs and the economy.
If this happens, I predict that it will cost Republicans because most voters will cast their votes based on who it talking jobs and the economy. And I saw this as a pro-life Republican, so it does not give me cause for optimism.
Mitigating this was that number of independents who call themselves “pro-life” increased. Perhaps this translates into more Republican votes from independents if the candidate is pro-life.
I think what this means, in and of itself, is that Republican candidates can have jobs & economy positions as long as pro-life is part of it.