HomeLearning CenterHow women are reshaping the 2022 Senate map

How women are reshaping the 2022 Senate map

Republican Senate candidates appear to be getting more and more concerned about losing women voters this fall. POLITICO reporter Natalie Allison recently took a close look at two indications that GOP candidates in Senate races are worried that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision could be turning female voters away from the party. “One after the other, Republican nominees in top Senate battlegrounds have softened, backpedaled and sought to clarify their abortion positions after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade,” Allison wrote. “Another [sign] is that male candidates have begun putting their wives in front of the camera to speak directly to voters in new television ads.”

The change in tactics is a departure from years in which the conventional wisdom in politics was that abortion wasn’t enough of a deciding factor in how people voted. That’s clearly changed, though, as women’s voter registration has surged ahead of men’s in crucial states in recent months and after a Wall Street Journal poll was released last week showing that abortion was the single issue most likely to drive respondents to vote in November.

Read the full POLITICO article by Allison to hear more about what strategists in a wide array of states are thinking about how the post-Dobbs landscape could torpedo — or not — Republican chances in the fall. I called the author to talk a little bit more about the takeaways, and what we still don’t know about how all of this might play out in November.

Politico

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