Why Some People Will Vote for Abortion Rights—and Trump

But what should we make of the four in ten women voters in Arizona who said they would vote for Kari Lake for Senate and yet also support the ballot measure? Lake has backed laws banning abortion over the course of her political career, has praised a near-total abortion ban, and still denies that she and Trump lost their last elections. At first, these numbers can seem shocking, or lend themselves to hopes that those Lake voters could be flipped if only they had the “right” information.

“The shocking thing to me,” Kelly Hall said, “is the number of Arizona voters who believe that Joe Biden was to blame for the fall of Roe, because it happened on his watch—the number of folks who do not pay attention to this for a living, who don’t fundamentally understand that there is a major difference between the parties on this issue.” In Arizona, according to a May 2024 Times/Siena poll, around 16 percent of registered voters said that Biden bears a lot or some responsibility “for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion.” (56 percent said it was Trump’s responsibility.) On this question, the Arizona voters were in line with those in other swing states, where on average, 17 percent of voters blamed Biden for the end of Roe, including 12 percent of Democrats.

“There is actually not as deep and well-worn a connection between ‘Democrats are good on this issue and agree with me and Republicans are not’ as folks in DC and the coast would like to believe,” Hall continued. And some Republican candidates, including Donald Trump, who claims he merely “returned abortion to the states,” are working to muddy that distinction. “It is the job of the Democratic party, if they want to take it on, to draw that distinction,” Hall said.