The next election is more than 14 months away, but every analyst who studies the data is coming to the same conclusion: That contest – a likely rerun between Joe Biden and Donald Trump – will be very close. Democrats start with a small advantage in the electoral map, but the latest national polls show the two contenders in a dead heat.
As Ronald Brownstein notes on CNN, all signs "point toward a 2024 presidential contest that will likely be decided by a tiny sliver of voters in a rapidly shrinking list of swing states realistically within reach for either party." Kyle Kondik, who runs Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, tells Spectrum News: "As of right now, we're sort of expecting a lot of continuity from 2016 and 2020 in 2024."
Of course, many factors could alter the landscape, from Biden's personal health to Trump's legal headaches. But one critical factor has definitely changed since the last presidential election that seriously threatens to disrupt the "continuity" Kondik mentions: the Supreme Court's decision in the Dobbs case last year that ended a national right to abortion.
Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who joined the Dobbs decision, and that will certainly help him with his core supporters, but they won't decide the election. For every action in politics, there is a reaction, and the Dobbs case has crystalized the stakes for anti-Trump voters and provided an energy and incentive that Biden himself cannot hope to generate. Trump's most significant achievement could prove to be his political undoing.
"It'll be some irony if Republicans come to rue last year's Dobbs decision for making them unelectable in all but the reddest parts of the country – and Democrats come to celebrate it for helping them cement a long-term majority," writes conservative columnist Bret Stephens in The New York Times.
Abortion matters so much because the last two elections have been so close. A shift of fewer than 80,000 votes in three states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – would have made Hillary Clinton president in 2016. Four years later, a similar switch in four states – Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin – would have given Trump a second term.
This year, only those four states with 43 electoral votes qualify as true tossups. The Democratic-leaning states contain 260 electoral votes, only 10 short of what Biden needs to win, while the Republican states represent 235 votes.
If the pattern holds, Republicans need to win all four tossups (or three without Nevada), and here's where abortion could really bite them. It does not have to change a lot of votes to make a big impact.
Issues gain traction when they directly affect people's lives, and the Dobbs decision turned abortion rights from an abstract concern to a real threat for many voters. One out of four told exit pollsters last fall that abortion was the "most important" issue for them, and about three-quarters of those backed Democratic candidates.
Trump himself agreed on the issue's potency, writing on Truth Social why Republicans lost key races: "It was the 'abortion issue,' poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters."
In the latest NBC poll, 61 percent oppose the Dobbs decision and only 36 percent support it. "Nearly 80 percent of female voters ages 18-49, two-thirds of suburban women, 60 percent of independents and even a third of Republican voters say they disapprove," reports NBC. Pollster Aileen Cardona-Arroyo concluded: "Without a doubt, the issue of abortion will continue to shape our country's political and electoral landscape moving forward."
The evidence strongly supports her. Last April in Wisconsin, a race for the state Supreme Court turned heavily on the abortion issue, and the pro-abortion rights candidate won by an 11-point margin. In Ohio, hardly a blue bastion, a recent statewide referendum focused largely on the abortion issue, and the pro-abortion rights side easily prevailed.
These results reflect a reaction that goes far beyond abortion itself. Many voters see Dobbs as a symbolic rejection of their larger rights and independence. Analyst Amy Walter cites a post-election Republican survey that found "(f)or many women, the issue was about much more than abortion. It was about how we (Republicans) view and respect women in America. This sentiment is deeply felt and highly nuanced."
Fourteen months is a long time in politics, but two key facts are already clear: The election will be close, and the abortion issue could well make the difference.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.
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