Georgia Senate runoff tests the staying power of abortion in American elections

The high-stakes Senate runoff in Georgia next week will be the first major test of abortion politics since the 2022 general election, when a backlash to the Supreme Court’s decision galvanized proponents of abortion rights and boosted Democrats.

The 26% of Georgians who ranked abortion as their top issue backed Warnock by a margin of 77% to 21%, NBC News exit polls showed.

While some like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have sought to minimize abortion and pivot to other issues, leading anti-abortion advocates insist that’s a losing strategy and want Republicans to lean in and paint Democrats as the real extremists.

“Y’all heard him talk about how he would think it’s OK to kill a baby all the way up to nine months,” Walker said Tuesday at a campaign stop in Greensboro.

The 2022 election, in which Democrats held control of the Senate and limited their House losses, sparked a rare point of political consensus among the warring sides: The issue of abortion is here to stay — in Georgia and beyond.

Dannenfelser said the election proves that downplaying abortion is a loser for the GOP: “Those who want to stay away from it are going to get shellacked by the other side,” she said.

NBC News exit polls showed 60% of voters believe abortion should be legal, while 37% said it should be illegal.

Democrats are determined to make Republicans continue to pay a price, in Georgia and the 2024 presidential election, for assembling the Supreme Court majority that nuked Roe v.

“I believe it will continue to be an issue until we can codify Roe into law for all Americans,” said Sen.

For instance, the NBC News national exit poll showed that 29% of voters want abortion to be legal in “all cases,” while 30% say it should be legal in “most cases,” indicating an openness to some limitations.

Gary Peters, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the party’s Senate campaign arm, said abortion will remain a “permanent” feature of American elections until Republicans back down

“Clearly, the national abortion ban would have a significant impact for everybody regardless of the state that they live in,” Peters said