Republicans are nearly evenly divided over the Arizona supreme court’s decision to uphold an 1864 law that would ban almost all abortions, new polling shows.
Forty-nine per cent of Republicans strongly or somewhat disapprove of the decision, while 46% of Republicans strongly or somewhat approve of it, according to polling of more than 1,000 likely voters released on Tuesday by the left-leaning thinktank Data for Progress. That split reflects the GOP’s identity crisis over post-Roe v Wade abortion politics, as Republican politicians have struggled to talk about an issue that was once their bread-and-butter but has become increasingly toxic for them.
Data for Progress found that voters diverged along party lines on whether they believed Donald Trump’s statements on the issue. Trump has said that the Arizona supreme court went too far while insisting that the decision will be “straightened out”. He has also continued to say that abortion remains an issue best decided by state governments, a position he took in a video issued just a day before the Arizona supreme court ruling.
In the group’s polling, more than 80% of Democrats said that they believed Trump was being “dishonest” and would sign national restrictions on abortion. About the same percentage of Republicans said that Trump was being “honest” and would not restrict abortion further.
Independents were more split. Forty-four per cent of independent and third-party voters said that they thought Trump was being honest, but 41% per cent of those voters believed that Trump was being dishonest.
Forty-one per cent of independent and third-party voters also believed that Trump would restrict abortion access if elected president, while 30% thought he would keep abortion access roughly the same. Only a quarter of Republicans thought Trump would restrict abortion access; about half thought he would leave abortion access alone. Just 12% thought he would tighten abortion restrictions, with the rest of the Republican voters in the poll saying that they did not know.
Ultimately, though, most voters thought that the president of the United States has relatively little to do with abortion rights. Republicans, independent voters and third-party voters, in particular, think members of Congress, statewide officials and state lawmakers all have more to do with setting abortion policy.
Before the US supreme court overturned Roein 2022, the GOP embraced abortion bans and passed scores of restrictions that, now that Roe has fallen, have been able to take full effect and cut off access to the procedure for millions of women. But most Americans believe abortion should at least be available in the first trimester of pregnancy and, powered by outrage over Roe’s demise, abortion-rights supporters have won multiple red-state ballot measures to protect abortion rights.
Some Republican officials and candidates have since attempted to moderate their stance on abortion; multiple Arizona Republicans with a history of anti-abortion beliefs denounced the Arizona supreme court decision. However, Republicans in the state legislature also blocked an effort to repeal the 1864 abortion ban, which would only permit abortions in cases where the pregnant person’s life was in danger and does not have exceptions for rape or incest.
