Concern over abortion bans helps Democrats, but is it enough to overcome high inflation?

WASHINGTON —  One of the best known patterns in politics is that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm election. But how come?

A leading political science theory holds that voters reflect the general human wariness toward change and react against whatever new direction an administration sets. In this view, voters act like a thermostat, resisting efforts by the party in power to shift the temperature one way or the other.

But what if the party in the White House isn’t the one truly in power? What if it’s the opposition party that has caused the biggest change in policy for the country, using its control over the Supreme Court and many state legislatures?

And what if that change runs against the views of a large majority on an issue about which voters have deeply entrenched views?

What, then, happens with the thermostatic theory of voting behavior?

Over the next several months, we may just find out.

A shift toward Democrats

We’re now three weeks out from the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, ending a half-century in which abortion rights were guaranteed nationwide. That’s enough time to get a good sense of the public reaction to the decision and its political impact.

On the decision, polls show a consistent picture — Americans disagree with the court by a large margin, 60% to 37%, in a Monmouth University survey, which is similar to several other recent polls. That’s no surprise: Before the ruling, Americans said by about that same margin that they did not want the court to overturn Roe.

The decision has pushed abortion way up the list of top voter concerns. A clear read on that comes from surveys by Ipsos for the website FiveThirtyEight. The firm surveyed just over 3,000 Americans in May and June, then went back to 2,000 of them after the court’s decision.

In the surveys before the decision, 9% of Americans rated abortion as one of the most important issues for the country, putting the topic well down the list. After the decision, that rose to 19%, putting abortion in fourth place (behind inflation, crime or gun violence, and political extremism). Democrats were especially likely to rate abortion as a top issue, going from 13% saying so to 27%.

Along with the increased salience of abortion has come a shift in how some Americans say they plan to vote. At least half a dozen polls that ask Americans which party they would like to see controlling Congress have come out since the decision. They’ve shown a small but significant shift toward Democrats.

The FiveThirtyEight-Ipsos poll, for example, showed a 5-point Republican advantage in early May. That shifted to a 1-point Democratic advantage in their most recent survey. A survey released this week by Siena College for the New York Times similarly showed the two parties roughly tied on that congressional ballot question.

On average, surveys before and after the Supreme Court decision have shown about a 3-point shift toward the Democrats, FiveThirtyEight found.

Ordinarily, a shift like that after a major news event will fade after a few weeks. But as Democratic strategist and pollster Anna Greenberg told me before the court decision, concern over abortion may follow a different pattern.

That’s largely because Republican officials in red states, pushed by the fervor of their party’s antiabortion wing, can be counted on to act in ways that will keep the issue in the headlines, she said.

That’s been the case in Ohio, for example, where a 10-year-old, pregnant after being raped, had to travel to Indiana for an abortion earlier this month. Ohio law bans abortions once fetal cardiac activity can be detected, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest.

Republican leaders, including the state’s attorney general, tried to deny the case even existed until Tuesday, when a 27-year-old man was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, and charged with two counts of rape after he confessed. At the man’s arraignment on Wednesday, the detective who investigated the rape confirmed in court that the girl had received an abortion in Indianapolis.

Elsewhere in states with Republican-controlled governments, legislatures have been passing comprehensive abortion bans, with no exceptions for rape, incest or protecting a woman’s life. Some lawmakers have proposed measures to block people from traveling to other states to obtain abortions or from assisting someone seeking to end a pregnancy. Others are pushing for criminal prosecutions of providers as well as women who have abortions.

It’s hard to overstate the unpopularity of those positions. The FiveThirtyEight-Ipsos poll found that 78% of Americans opposed efforts to block travel across state lines, including 73% of Republicans. In the Monmouth poll, 85% of Americans favored allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest and to protect a woman’s life. And only 7% favored a nationwide ban on abortions, which an increasing number of Republican candidates have advocated.

“Legislatures in conservative states that are enacting draconian abortion bans appear to be imposing provisions that represent a fringe view even within their own states,” said Patrick Murray, who directs the Monmouth poll.

None of that, however, means Democrats are now the favorites to keep control of the House. Abortion is a powerful issue, but it’s far behind the No. 1 topic on the public’s mind — rising prices.

For a while, some Democrats sought to minimize the impact of higher costs for food, gasoline, rent and nearly everything else, but recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics drove home how real it is: Adjusted for inflation, average hourly earnings were 3.6% lower last month than the year before. That’s an especially heavy burden for low-income Americans.

That’s what lies behind President Biden’s low approval rates, which have now dropped to 37% in the latest survey from the Pew Research Center — some of the lowest numbers for any recent president.

During President Obama’s and President Trump’s tenures, the relationship between economic performance and a president’s job approval seemed to break down. Neither man’s ratings changed significantly with economic conditions. But as political scientists John Sides and Robert Griffin recently wrote, that’s one thing that has returned to normal with Biden: His job approval is precisely what one would expect with the worst inflation since the early 1980s.

Prices may calm down somewhat over the next few months — gasoline already has dropped four weeks in a row. But most economists expect inflation will remain high for at least the rest of this year.

The question for Democrats heading into this fall’s midterm elections is how many of them can outrun the undertow that creates. The abortion issue can help them — especially if Republicans continue to push deeply unpopular policies. But the pattern of recent elections has more and more been that congressional races are referendums on the president more than individual candidates.

Escaping that may be impossible in House races, where voters tend not to know the candidates well. In the Senate, it may be more feasible, and Republicans may have helped by nominating weak candidates in key states. A poll released Thursday in Georgia, for example, found Sen. Raphael Warnock leading his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, 50% to 47%, with Warnock running 16 points ahead of Biden’s job approval in the state.

It’s been 30 years since James Carville, the strategist for Bill Clinton, boiled political analysis down to a sentence: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

This year, his party has to hope that’s changed.

Biden in the Mideast

— The president is on a four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and, as Noah Bierman and Tracy Wilkinson wrote, efforts to counter Iran are a central topic in both countries.

— But as Eli Stokols wrote, the Saudi part of the visit will inevitably be shadowed by the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist killed in Turkey by a hit squad that U.S. intelligence concluded was ordered by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Biden and other administration officials have avoided questions about when and how the president will meet with MBS, as the crown prince is known, and their evasiveness has only drawn attention to Biden’s discomfort, Stokols wrote.

— On Thursday, Biden continued to side-step the issue, Bierman wrote. At a news conference in Jerusalem, he would not commit to confronting the leaders of Saudi Arabia over the killing. “I always bring up human rights, but my position on Khashoggi has been so clear, if anyone doesn’t understand it in Saudi Arabia — or anywhere else — they haven’t been around,” Biden said.

— With the attention focused on Iran, the plight of Palestinians has gotten very short shrift on Biden’s trip, as Wilkinson and Bierman reported. Biden repeated his long-standing support for a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict and paid a visit to President Mahmoud Abbas, two things his predecessor avoided. But Palestinians say such symbolic steps don’t add up to much.

Abortion battles

— Many abortion-rights advocates are looking to pills sent by mail as an option for pregnant women who live in states where abortion is now outlawed. But what if those states try to outlaw the pills? David Savage looks at the legal issues involved in whether states can block a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

— While the politics of abortion so far mostly cut against Republicans, some GOP candidates are looking for ways to turn the tables. Mark Barabak looks at the campaign Mark Ronchetti, the Republican candidate for governor of New Mexico, is waging against Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. In a new campaign ad, the Republican says he wants to “come together on a policy that reflects our shared values.” Democrats are “extremists” on the issue who won’t accept any abortion limits, he says. Ronchetti’s advertisements on the topic appear to be the first by a Republican candidate, but probably won’t be the last, Barabak writes.

The latest from Washington

— Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina is probably the most powerful Black member of Congress, a close confidant of Biden’s and the No. 3 ranking Democrat in the House. He’s also 81 and, like many members of the House leadership, facing pressure from younger members to step aside. In an interview with Nolan D. McCaskill, Clyburn rejected that idea.

“I’m a Christian. Christianity teaches that ... the old know the way, the young are strong enough to get us there,” Clyburn said. “We must be careful that we do not have an imbalance between knowledge and strength.”

The latest from California

— GOP Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona has held onto his seat in Congress for 30 years, in part by opposing gay rights. Now he’s running for reelection against a gay rival in a district that includes Palm Springs, which has one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ voters in America. As Seema Mehta reported, Calvert says his views have changed.

— California’s November ballot will include a proposed amendment to the state Constitution protecting abortion rights. One major issue in the campaign between now and then, as George Skelton wrote, will be whether the language would prevent the state from regulating late-term abortions. Opponents claim it would, which supporters deny.

— Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled to Washington this week to accept an award and, as Taryn Luna wrote, to further raise his profile as a champion for Democrats who want to see their leaders fighting more aggressively against Republicans. In an interview with The Times, Newsom said he was “sick and tired of the state getting bashed 24/7 by the right wing,” adding that “I’m not going to just sit back and watch these guys dominate that narrative.”

— Democrat Katie Hill, a former California congresswoman who owes nearly $275,000 to media parties she unsuccessfully sued over the publication of salacious pictures while she was in office, has filed for bankruptcy. As Mehta reported, a court ordered Hill to pay the attorneys’ fees to the defendants, including a conservative website, a British tabloid and two journalists. The bankruptcy filing, if it holds up, could allow Hill to avoid paying.

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