At least 65 percent of evangelical Christians believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, according to the AP VoteCast data, compared with 29 percent of nonevangelical voters. That 36-point gap is far larger than the 21-point gap between evangelical and nonevangelical support for Joseph R. Biden in the 2020 election.
As a result, the conflicted voters tend to be relatively religious Democrats and less religious Republicans, including Black evangelical Democrats who oppose abortion or relatively secular white working-class Trump voters who support abortion rights.
The importance of religion brings a clear regional dimension to the political stakes of the issue. Evangelical and religious voters are disproportionately concentrated in the South. That includes conflicted Democrats: Only 59 percent of Southern Democratic-leaning voters say most abortions should be legal, according to Pew Research. Conflicted Republicans, meanwhile, are likeliest to live in the North and especially the Northeast.
For Republicans, the electoral risk might be most pronounced in these Northern battleground states, where a sizable share of their voters believe abortion should be legal. About 37 percent of Donald J. Trump’s supporters in Pennsylvania and Michigan believe that abortion should be mostly legal, according to the AP VoteCast data. It’s a large enough number to create a plausible electoral vulnerability for Republicans advocating abortion restrictions, but it’s a small enough number that the party would most likely support new abortion restrictions if the Supreme Court allowed it.
There’s nothing new about these cultural issues holding Republicans back in the Midwest.
Republicans struggled to break through in the region for a generation, as the religious right helped the party in the South but not in the less evangelical Northern battleground states. It was Mr. Trump’s new brand of incendiary politics, focused on issues like immigration and crime, that helped Republicans gain an advantage in the region by polarizing American politics along educational rather than religious lines.
The State of Abortion in the U.S.
Card 1 of 5Who gets abortions in America? The portrait of abortion has changed with society. Today, teenagers are having far fewer abortions. The typical patient is most likely already a mother,  poor, unmarried, in her late 20s, has some college education and is very early in pregnancy.


Abortion pills. The F.D.A. will permanently allow patients to receive abortion pills by mail, broadening access to medication abortion, but many conservative states are likely to mobilize against the decision. In 19 states, telemedicine visits for the pills are already banned.




Although renewed attention on abortion might cut against some Trump-era trends, it could tend to reinforce others, like deteriorating Democratic strength among nonwhite voters. Much like white voters, Black and Hispanic voters are largely divided on abortion, even though they are far more likely to vote Democratic.
Of course, just because voters are conflicted on an issue doesn’t mean they are bound to break to the other party. Many of these voters are partisans, despite their views on abortion, precisely because they care more about other issues.

Source: New York Times

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