Why Abortion Bans Keep Getting Passed, Even Though They’re Unpopular

While opposition to abortion has long been linked to conservative religious views, the growing influence of Christian nationalism within the GOP means that there is little incentive in the near term for red states with abortion bans to change course. PRRI analysis shows that overall, the higher a state’s residents scored on PRRI’s Christian nationalism scale, the less likely those residents are to support legal abortion.

Simply asking people whether they think abortion should be legal, however, doesn’t capture the complexity of abortion’s impact on national elections. When PRRI first asked Americans in 2018 whether they would only vote for a candidate who shared their view on abortion, Republicans who opposed abortion legality in 2018 were significantly more likely than Democrats who supported abortion legality to say that they would only vote for candidates who shared their views (34 percent versus 25 percent, respectively).

Today, we find that 50 percent of Democrats who support abortion legality view abortion as a critical litmus test issue, now at a higher rate than Republicans who oppose abortion rights (44 percent). Yet the 10-point increase among Republican abortion opponents who view abortion as key to their voting choices also shows the recalcitrant nature of the abortion debate. Many Republican base voters indicate more willingness to keep these hard-fought, restrictive policies in place in certain states—however unpopular they are with their state’s residents.