Healthcare Prof:
In the recent midterm elections, many Democrats who made abortion rights a central issue won key Senate races by attracting moderate female voters, Politico reports. The strategy contrasts with Democrats’ tactics in 2006 and 2008, when they fielded antiabortion-rights candidates in some socially conservative districts. Many of those Democrats lost their re-election bids this year.
Voters sometimes see candidates’ abortion-rights views as an indication of their positions on other social issues, Politico reports. Deirdre Schifeling, political director with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said, “Candidates’ positions on choice do serve a signaling function, in terms with the kind of person they are and if they are standing up for ladies or not.”
At the same time, abortion rights can be a deciding factor for voters who are on the fence. Schifeling said, “We go after a very targeted, specific group of voters: these swing, pro-choice women.” She added that abortion “is an problem that really cuts by way of some with the noise around other issues where candidates may not sound so different from each other.” PPAF spent a total of $2.2 million on campaigns across the U.S., sending mailers to 1.4 million households.
Abortion Issues Tip Colo, Nev., Calif., Races
The Senate race between Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet and Republican prosecutor Ken Buck in Colorado was decided by fewer than 16,000 votes, with women choosing Bennet by 17 percentage points, in accordance with exit polling. A message-testing survey by the Democratic group Project New West discovered that 24% of respondents said Buck’s antiabortion-rights views were the largest reason they would not vote for him. The poll question said that Buck “opposes abortion, even in case of rape and incest.”
Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) won his Nevada re-election campaign over challenger Sharon Angle, who also opposes abortion in all cases except life endangerment and said that some rape survivors who become pregnant were able to turn “what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.” Reid won among female voters by 11 percentage points but lost male voters by two points.
In California, incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer defeated Republican Carly Fiorina by nearly 10 percentage points. A mailer sent by Planned Parenthood stated that Fiorina’s antiabortion-views are “too extreme” for California and suggested that she would work to criminalize the procedure. A survey taken Nov. 2 by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake showed that 52% of voters who had heard about abortion inside the Senate race were unlikely to support Fiorina (Burns, Politico, 11/13).
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