US Gubernatorial Candidates’ Campaigning on Abortion after Roe v Wade Was Overturned

The final speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is the brilliant Jenny Stromer-Galley, whose focus is on the fundamental changes to the abortion debate in the United States since the current Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade ruling. Abortion has been a highly polarising issue in the US ever since women’s reproductive rights fell under legal jurisdiction in the 1800s, of course, and is tangled up with American nation-building mythologies.

Ever since the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, there has been a consistent effort to push back against its consequences, especially from the conservative right; this is now also tied up with the broader rise of the far right in the United States. It is also a significant political campaign issue in the current presidential election, unsurprisingly – and campaigns are using social media platforms like Facebook to speak directly to their supporters about these issues.

Republicans and Democrats have consistently expressed very different perspectives on abortion, but how has the overturning of Roe v Wade affected this, and are there significant differences between male and female candidates for governor in the various states? This project examined data from the gubernatorial races in the 2018 and 2022 election periods across 36 states.

Democrats are much more likely to talk about abortion, and this was turbocharged in 2022 after the demise of Roe v Wade; Republicans try to avoid the issue altogether in their posts. This is probably because it is not advantageous for them to highlight the issue. Male candidates tend to address it more often than women, too. Partisanship matters much more than gender overall, though.

Of course the specific state situation matters considerably, too – there is more campaigning on abortion where the issue is on the table in the form of new legislation, for instance. Some Republican women candidates are also engaging in some very complex signalling of their support for women’s reproductive rights, without actually saying so too explicitly…