FDU Poll: Abortion Concerns Boost Turnout, But Not Democrats in NJ Races

For Immediate Release

Contact:                           

Dan Cassino 

Executive Director, FDU Poll    

973.896.7072/ dcassino@fdu.edu

Abortion Concerns Boost Turnout, But Not Democrats in NJ Races

A survey experiment shows that abortion is making pro-choice voters more likely to turn out, but isn’t changing how people are planning to vote

Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, November 3, 2022 – New Jersey voters support abortion rights by a wide margin, and since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade and other abortion cases, Democrats have been counting on abortion to help them buck historical trends and retain control of Congress, or at least minimize losses, in the 2022 midterms. According to the latest results from the FDU Poll, New Jersey voters say that they support a woman’s right to have an abortion, but while making the race about abortion is leading more New Jerseyans to say that they’ll vote, it’s not making them more likely to vote for Democrats.

Overall, 51 percent of New Jersey residents say that they unconditionally support a women’s right to have an abortion. Thirty-seven percent say that they believe abortion should be allowable only under certain circumstances, and 10 percent say that abortion should never be legal. Women are more likely than men to say that abortion should be legal under any circumstances than men (60 percent versus 38 percent), and Democrats (73 percent) are much more likely than Republicans (23 percent) or independents (43 percent) to say the same.

“New Jersey is much more pro-choice than the country as a whole,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and Politics at FDU, and the Executive Director of the Poll. “If Democrats are going to talk about abortion anywhere, they should be talking about it here.”

But the fact that New Jersey residents generally support abortion rights doesn’t mean that those views are going to change voting behaviors. To see how abortion might impact the election, the survey included an embedded experiment. In it, respondents were randomly assigned to be asked about abortion either before or after being asked about whether and how they would vote in the upcoming elections. By making abortion more immediately relevant to some respondents, we can see how the issue is impacting their answers to later questions on the survey.

Overall, respondents who were asked about abortion first were slightly more likely to say that they were “certain or almost certain” to vote in the upcoming elections than respondents who were asked only after answering questions about the election. Seventy percent of New Jersey residents who were asked about abortion first said that they were “certain or almost certain” to vote, compared with 66 percent of those asked only afterwards.

“The big question in this election has been about whether abortion is going to mobilize people who otherwise don’t turn up in midterms,” said Cassino. “In New Jersey, the answer is yes, even if the effect isn’t as big as Democrats might have been hoping for.”

That four-point difference hides a larger underlying effect, in which abortion makes pro-abortion voters much more likely to vote, and other voters less likely to turn out. When we ask about abortion first, those New Jerseyans who say that they support abortion being legal under all circumstances become 18 points more likely to say that they’re certain or almost certain to vote (77 percent versus 59 percent). However, among respondents who say that abortion should be legal only under some circumstances, asking abortion reduces the percent who say that they’re certain or almost certain to vote by 11 points (76 percent to 65 percent). Even that difference is dwarfed by the reduction in turnout likelihood among respondents who are opposed to abortion under all circumstances: in that group, asking abortion leads to a 22-point reduction in the percent saying that they are certain or almost certain to vote (76 percent to 54 percent).

“For decades, Republican candidates have been able to mobilize their supporters by talking about abortion,” said Cassino. “But now that states can do whatever they want on abortion, it looks like it’s having the opposite effect, making them more likely to stay home.”

However, the fact that asking about abortion makes voters more likely to say that they’ll vote doesn’t mean that they’re more likely to vote for Democrats. Overall, 37 percent of New Jersey residents who say that they’re planning to vote say that they’re going to vote for the Republican candidates, compared with 48 percent who say that they’re inclined to vote for the Democrat. Asking questions about abortion makes respondents who say that abortion should be legal only under some circumstances more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate — increasing it from 24 percent to 33 percent — but has no impact on the vote preferences of residents who think abortion should always be legal. The net impact is that asking about abortion has no significant impact on vote preferences overall.

“Since the eighties, abortion has been very closely tied to people’s partisan views,” said Cassino. “There just aren’t a lot of Democrats or Republicans left who are at odds with how their party views abortion rights, so it makes sense that it’s not changing many votes.”

Methodology

The survey was conducted between October 24 and November 1, 2022, using a certified list of adult New Jersey residents carried out by Ironwood Insights. Respondents were randomly chosen from the list and contacted via either live-caller telephone interviews or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 801 respondents. 174 of the surveys were carried out via live-caller telephone interviews on both cell phones (70%) and landlines (30%), and the remainder (627) were done on a web platform via web links sent via SMS to cell phones. Surveys were conducted only in English.

The data were weighted to be representative of the population of adult NJ residents, as of the 2020 US Census. The weights used, like all weights, balance the demographic characteristics of the sample to match known population parameters. The weighted results used here are balanced to match parameters for sex, age, education and race/ethnicity.

SPSSINC RAKE, an SPSS extension module that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using the GENLOG procedure, was used to produce final weights. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis helps to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample approximate the demographic characteristics of the target population. The size of these weights is used to construct the measure of design effects, which indicates the extent to which the reported results are being driven by the weights applied to the data, rather than found in the data itself. Simply put, these design effects tell us how many additional respondents would have been needed to get the weighted number of respondents across weighted categories: larger design effects indicate greater levels of under-representation in the data. In this case, the calculated design effects are approximately 1.4.

All surveys are subject to sampling error, which is the expected probable difference between interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn from that population. Sampling error should be adjusted to recognize the effect of weighting the data to better match the population. In this poll, the simple sampling error for 801 registered voters is +/-3.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-4.9 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported.

This error calculation does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion studies, such as non-response, question-wording, differences in translated forms, or context effects. While such errors are known to exist, they are often unquantifiable within a particular survey, and all efforts, such as randomization and extensive pre-testing of items, have been used to minimize them.

Weighted Telephone Sample Characteristics

801 New Jersey Residents

Figures are weighted to overall voter characteristics from the 2020 US Census. Respondents who refused to answer a demographic item are not included.

Man                                

42%                 N = 341

Woman                            

55%                 N = 436

Some Other Way          

3%                  N = 22

18-30                          

21%                N = 162

31-44                          

25%                 N = 207

45-64                          

32%                 N = 261

65+                              

19%                 N = 154

Democrat (with leaners)             

50%                 N = 354

Independent                                 

17%                 N = 118

Republican (with leaners)          

33%                 N = 240

White                                           

53%                N = 400

Black                                              

14%                N = 104

Hispanic/Latino/a                                     

24%                N = 178

Asian                                       

7%                  N = 55

Other/Multi-racial                                    

2%                  N = 16

No college degree                     

55%                N = 447

College degree or more             

45%                N = 350

Question Wording and Order

E1. [Half of the Respondents get this question here; half get it after E3] Do you think abortion should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?

1. Legal under any circumstances
2. Legal only under certain circumstances
3. Illegal in all circumstances
4. [Don’t Know/Refused]

E2. Later this year, there will be an election for members of Congress, and for some other offices. How likely do you think it is that you’ll vote in that election? Would you say that you are…

1. Certain or Almost Certain to vote
2. Very Likely to vote
3. Somewhat Likely to vote
4. Not Very Likely to vote
5. Almost certainly will not vote
6. Already Voted [Note: not volunteered in the TTW]
7. [Don’t Know/Refused]

E3. [Ask only if E2 is not 5] In the race for the House of Representatives in your district, do you think you’ll vote for the Republican candidate, or the Democratic candidate [switch order]?

1. Republican
2. Democrat
3. Someone Else [vol]
4. [Don’t Know/Refused]

E1A. [Half of the Respondents get this question here; half get it before E2] Do you think abortion should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?

1. Legal under any circumstances
2. Legal only under certain circumstances
3. Illegal in all circumstances
4. [Don’t Know/Refused]

Release Tables