This also holds true for a range of social issues, but Democrats have managed to navigate most of those despite the basic split between the white socially liberal and the black socially conservative wings of the party.
Gay marriage wasn’t a political dealbreaker, abortion certainly won’t be, but the lack of enthusiasm is a midterm problem. Democrats depend on black voter turnout and their midterm trump card doesn’t especially move the black vote.
The strong support for abortion rights among Democrats tends to obscure more nuanced positions held by critical components of the party’s electoral coalition, including among Latino voters in places like South Texas, once a Democratic stronghold, where the issue has helped push some Catholic voters toward Republicans.
But navigating the discussion about abortion rights is especially critical to President Biden among Black voters, a vital constituency to him and one that has shown periodic signs of frustration with his priorities in the White House.
That’s a convoluted way of saying that minorities are much less enthusiastic than white lefties about abortion. And yet the same paper that can dig into the “whiteness” of ballet or modern art can’t manage to do the same for the whiteness of militant abortion politics.
The percentage of Black Democrats who said they found abortion morally acceptable rose to 50 percent in aggregated polling by Gallup between 2017 and 2020 from 34 percent in polling between 2001 and 2007. Among non-Black Democrats, the figure between 2017 and 2020 was 66 percent, up from 53 percent in the earlier period.
Similarly, the percentage of Black Democrats saying that abortion should be legal under any circumstances increased to 35 percent for the period between 2017 and 2020 from 27 percent between 2001 and 2007. Among non-Black Democrats polled between 2017 and 2020, 45 percent said abortion should be legal under any circumstances, up from 36 percent in the earlier period.
Lifestyle abortion until the second of birth is a whole lot more popular among white lefties than black Democrats. And it’s likely that the percentage shift among black Democrats is tied to the diminishing religious commitments of black Democrats.
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