Voters locked in on candidates despite abortion allegations

Just days after news reports revealed that Herschel Walker — the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia who strongly opposes abortion — encouraged and paid for an ex-girlfriend to have the procedure, a plurality of American voters nationwide indicated an allegation like that would be unlikely to change their vote.

Sixty-two percent of people said they wouldn’t consider changing their vote if their preferred candidate received an abortion, and 58 percent said their vote wouldn’t change if the candidate helped someone else receive an abortion, according to the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

Support dipped if a candidate paid for someone else to get an abortion, but a plurality of people, 45 percent, said they would stick with their preferred candidate.

Walker is reported to have encouraged an ex-girlfriend to have an abortion and reimbursed her for the procedure in 2009, according to reporting from the Daily Beast. Walker has denied the allegations.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they would vote for a candidate from a different party if their preferred candidate had or helped someone else have an abortion, the poll found.

The poll also showed majority support for the declassification of marijuana and President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon federal prison inmates charged with marijuana possession. Biden’s approval rating was similar to the previous week’s result at 43 percent, compared to 42 percent seven days earlier, and the congressional generic ballot results were unchanged, showing Democrats with a slight advantage.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, abortion has become an increasingly important midterm policy issue. States that have more restrictive abortion laws have seen an increase in voter registration. And the question of abortion access has become a topic in numerous Democratic ads while Republican candidates have modified their positions on abortion bans or restrictions on their campaign websites.

Fifty-seven percent of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases compared to 34 percent who believe it should be illegal in all or most cases, the poll found. Just 8 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion.

In the case of first-time candidate Walker, 54 percent of respondents said they had heard some or a lot about the report that he allegedly paid for a woman to have an abortion in 2009. The woman, according to reporting by the Daily Beast that POLITICO has not independently verified, is also the mother of one of Walker’s children. An additional 17 percent said they hadn’t heard much about this story, and 29 percent hadn’t heard about it at all.

Fewer than half of voters said they would change their vote if the Republican candidate that they supported, who publicly opposes abortion, privately paid for someone to have one — exactly the allegation facing Walker.

Seventeen percent said they would vote for a candidate from a different party. People who “approve” of Biden’s job performance were among the highest percentage of people to say they would vote for a different party, followed closely by those who describe themselves as ideologically liberal.

Another 12 percent of voters said they would not vote if their favored Republican candidate publicly opposed abortion and then privately paid for an abortion.

In another question not specifically about Republican candidates, 45 percent of voters said they wouldn’t think to change their vote if it was found out that a candidate paid for someone else to have an abortion. Seventeen percent said they would vote for a different party.

About one out of 10 voters said they would simply not vote at all. Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who oppose abortion made up the largest portion of those who said they would not vote.

More than a quarter of voters in the poll said they didn’t know or didn’t have an opinion.

In Georgia’s neck-and-neck Senate race, Republican and Republican-leaning voters opting out of the election or voting for a different party — which this year could mean a Democrat, a Libertarian or a write-in candidate — could give the edge to Walker’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, or prevent any candidate from winning 50 percent of the vote, forcing a runoff election in early December.

The survey included 2,006 registered voters and was conducted Oct. 7 to 9. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.