By 51% to 32%, battleground state voters say Republicans are more extreme on abortion than Democrats, according to polling exclusively provided to NBC News by WPA Intelligence, a GOP political consulting firm.
The poll showed 41% of likely voters surveyed said the Dobbs decision, which did away with constitutional protections for abortion, made them more likely to vote for a Democrat; 24% said it made them more likely to back Republicans.
Asked which group they identified with in the abortion debate, 54% said “Pro Choice,” compared to 39% who identified as “Pro Life.”
The findings are consistent with those of another recent survey shared with NBC News, conducted by the firm OnMessage Inc., which consults for Senate Republicans. It suggests “Pro Choice” voters outnumbered “Pro Life” voters by a similar margin of 17 percentage points, triple what it was before the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“We’re starting to see that happen, and, for all intents and purposes, I think this is a good thing,” said Mallory Carroll, a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List, “because pro-life Republicans have to be realistic about what is achievable.”
“DO NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN,” the slide deck, obtained by NBC News, reads in an all-caps red typeface on a page about Democrats’ seeking to paint Republicans as extreme. “MUST FIGHT THIS TO A DRAW.”
That’s a marked shift from earlier in the campaign cycle, when Republicans were far less likely to spend time and money talking about abortion. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, GOP operatives at the national and state levels advised candidates to stay focused on the economy rather than get drawn into battles over abortion. Democrats and their allies filled the airwaves in support of abortion rights: From the day the ruling was handed down in June through Sept. 8, the service AdImpact tracked $69 million in abortion-related ads from the Democratic side and $11 million on the GOP side.
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