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Gun rights voters, move over: With abortion, women and youth have discovered single-issue voting

by Bill Schneider, opinion contributor - 04/16/23 10:30 AM ET

Supreme Court protests — AP/Jacquelyn Martin
Nicky Sundt, of Washington, holds a sign with an image depicting Medusa that says, “Remember in November, Vote!,” outside of the Supreme Court, Wednesday, June 29, 2022, in Washington. “I’m trans and I identify as female,” says Sundt, “all the women in my life have supported me in my transition, and the least I can do is to come here and support them. I don’t have voting rights living in DC so what is there left to do but hold signs and protest.” She is concerned about climate change, women’s rights, and gay rights.

For Democrats, the abortion rights issue is becoming the political equivalent of the gun rights issue for Republicans: the issue that cements the loyalty of core constituencies. In the case of abortion rights, that means women and young people.

In a March national poll of registered voters by Marquette University Law School, women opposed the June 2022 Dobbs decision ending the constitutional protection of abortion rights by better than two to one (72 percent to 28 percent). Among voters under 30, opposition to ending abortion rights was even stronger (75 percent to 25 percent).

The secret behind the power of the gun rights issue is that so many of its supporters are single-issue voters: They refuse to vote for any candidate who threatens their gun rights.

If you are a legislator and you know that most of your constituents favor a new gun control law, you also know that it would be politically risky to support such a law. Why? Because you are certain to lose votes from the minority who will vote against you for that reason alone. They would likely outnumber those who would support you for that reason alone.

Most people who favor stronger gun laws don’t care so much about the issue that it drives their votes.

Single-issue politics is a kind of blackmail. Single-issue voters say to politicians, “We don’t care what your position is on anything else: If you are with us on our issue, we’ll support you. If you’re against us, we’ll come after you.”

Is that kind of intensity ever found on the left? Yes — usually when there is an antiwar movement, as there was during the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Antiwar voters said, “We only care about one thing: Where do you stand on the war?”

It may be happening now on abortion rights.

A politician who opposes abortion rights risks losing a lot of voters who will oppose him (or her) for that reason alone. Their numbers appear to be growing after the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade. We saw it happen in the 2022 midterms and in votes to protect abortion rights in Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky and now Wisconsin.

President Obama understood this. He urged voters who wanted to see stronger gun laws to become single-issue voters. “Here’s what you need to do,” Obama said after a mass shooting in Oregon in 2015. “You have to make sure that anybody that you are voting for is on the right side of this issue.” And if they oppose new gun laws? “Even if they’re great on other stuff, you’ve got to vote against them.”

In other words, let the gun issue drive your vote.

President Obama quickly undermined his own message when he compared gun laws to the effort by Republicans to shut down the federal government unless Planned Parenthood was defunded. “You can’t have an issue like that potentially wreck the entire U.S. economy, any more than I should hold the entire U.S. budget hostage to my desire to do something about gun violence,” Obama said. “That would be irresponsible of me.” The problem is that gun rights activists don’t care about being called “irresponsible.” They care about winning.

The message from gun rights activists and pro-choice activists is the same: You can’t take rights away from people without provoking a fierce political backlash.

Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party told the Washington Post, “I think the moment when Republicans in the presidential primary debate are asked whether they’ll support a national abortion ban and they raise their hands is the moment that they will lose the next presidential election.”

The decision by a federal judge in Texas — appointed by President Trump — to outlaw a widely used abortion medication is generating more outrage. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) called the ruling “simply bullshit.” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said, “It guarantees that abortion is going to be on the ballot again in 2024.”

Trump understands the risks. He wrote on Truth Social, “It was the abortion issue, poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions … that lost large numbers of voters.” Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) just signed into law a bill that extends Florida’s current ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy to just six weeks (before many women even realize they are pregnant).

“Why are gun owners so politically powerful?” an abortion rights activist said to me many years ago. “There are more uterus owners than gun owners. And when uterus owners begin to vote this issue, we will win.”

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable” (Simon & Schuster).