Women under 30 say abortion is their top election issue, new poll finds
Four in 10 women under 30 said abortion was a more important issue than inflation.
In this year’s election, abortion has surfaced as the No. 1 issue for women under 30, a new KFF poll has found.
In the new survey, conducted between Sept. 12 and Oct. 1, four in 10 women under 30 said abortion was a more important issue than inflation.
This latest finding is a striking change from a poll of female voters taken by KFF earlier in the year. That poll surveyed 1,383 registered female voters from the end of May to early June before President Joe Biden stepped out of the presidential race in July and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in. At that time, just one in 10 respondents said abortion was their top issue.
Inflation remains the No. 1 issue among female voters across all demographics. Those under 30 say abortion is their primary issue, and nine in 10 women overall said they trust Harris’ stance on abortion and trust her to decide policies on birth control, abortion access, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) over former President Donald Trump.
When asked whether this election will have an impact on abortion access, 82% of Democratic women and 42% of Republican women said it would.
Despite Trump’s efforts to appeal to women, including telling rallygoers in Pennsylvania that if reelected, he would be their “protector,” three in four women surveyed said they believed Trump would sign a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Alternatively, both Democratic (67%) and Republican women (49%) said they believed if Harris were elected she would restore a federal right to abortion.
In a September interview with Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Today,” Harris said she would support eliminating the Senate filibuster as a way to ensure there were enough votes to establish a federal constitutional right to abortion. Under the filibuster rule, most legislation requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass in the Senate instead of a 51-vote simple majority.
Both Democratic and Republican women said in the survey that they trusted Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz over Republican Sen. J.D. Vance on reproductive health issues; only 33% of Republican women trusted Vance, while 56% of Democrats said they trusted Walz.
The poll found in general that women of different races and ages felt more inspired to vote in the 2024 election after Harris entered the race. According to the June survey, 44% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans said they were motivated to vote; in September, 70% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans said the same.
When asked why she was motivated to vote for Harris, a 50-year-old white Democratic woman from Michigan said: “She is younger, female and a person of color. I was concerned that President Biden could not win reelection. I now think we have a chance.”
A Black 70-year-old Democrat from Oklahoma said: “I think she is educated. I think she is on top of it smart and intelligent and knows some of the ropes.”
