Was Abortion A Winning Issue for Democrats in 2010?

By John McCormack
Published November 15, 2010 8:15pm ET
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Politico’s Alexander Burns has published a story titled: “Abortion was winning issue for Democrats in 2010.”

While almost nothing went right for Democratic candidates this fall, one issue turned out to be a winner in some of the closest Senate races in the nation: abortion. 
By branding Republican challengers as outside the cultural mainstream on the issue, Democrats managed to hold on to at least a slice of the political center by courting and winning over moderate women in a handful of key states. 

The Senate races cited by Burns are Nevada, California, Colorado, and Washington, but the evidence that the abortion issue tipped the scales is not very persuasive. 

 

Burns writes of the Nevada race:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pummeled Republican challenger Sharron Angle for opposing abortion in all cases — and in particular, for telling an interviewer who asked about abortion in the case of a rape that some women were able to turn “what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.” Reid won women voters by 11 percentage points and nearly tied Angle among men, losing by just 2 points.

But at the very same time Nevada voters defeated antiabortion Senate candidate Sharron Angle 50% to 45%, they voted for antiabortion gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval 

Running against someone who opposes abortion in the case of rape is not quite the same thing as 

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In California, Planned Parenthood sent out a mailer comparing Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, charging that both “want to make criminals out of women who have abortions and the doctors who perform them” and branding both GOP women “too extreme for California.” 

Like most California Democrats, Boxer ended up winning reelection comfortably — unlike the razor-thin victory margins in Colorado and Washington, the Democrat prevailed by nearly 10 points. 

Still, abortion rights supporters believe the issue played a role in Fiorina’s defeat: A survey from the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, taken on the eve of the Nov. 2 election, showed that 52 percent of voters who had heard about abortion in the context of the Senate race were less likely to support the Republican. 

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Ignores 

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