Data from a large survey of U.S. voters found that a significant subset of voters who supported abortion rights ballot measures also voted for Trump.
Voters in three states — Arizona, Missouri, and Nevada — chose on Tuesday to advance protections for abortion rights in their state constitutions. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is likely to win all three states in his victorious bid for the White House.
It’s a conundrum for Democrats, who expected ballot initiatives on abortion rights in those states to boost the prospects of their candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris. But data from VoteCast, a large survey of U.S. voters conducted by The Associated Press and partners including KFF, found that about 3 in 10 voters in Arizona, Missouri, and Nevada who supported the abortion rights measures also voted for Trump.
“We saw lots of people who voted in favor of abortion access and still voted for Donald Trump,” said Liz Hamel, director of Public Opinion and Survey Research for KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
VoteCast is a survey of more than 115,000 registered voters in all 50 states conducted between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5. It’s intended to be “the most accurate picture possible of who has voted, and why,” according to the AP.
The pattern of voters supporting abortion rights, but choosing Trump over Harris held true in all ten states with ballot measures to protect abortion rights on the ballot.
About 1 in 4 of the polled voters said abortion was the “single most important” factor to their vote, though that number was higher among Democrats, young women, Black adults, and Hispanic adults.
Abortion rights referendums passed in seven of the states that had them on the ballot on Tuesday, including Missouri and Arizona, where state bans were overturned. Vice President Harris made reproductive rights a cornerstone of her campaign, but the VoteCast results reinforce earlier surveys that indicated economic concerns were the foremost issue in the election.
