Abortion Opinion and Partisan Choice: Untangling the Causal Dynamics

Abstract

Starting in the 1980s, U.S. voters began dividing on the abortion issue into pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. This study shows that the predominant direction of causality was that abortion opinion caused changes in partisanship rather than the reverse, which then had downstream consequences for vote choice. Working with the Youth Parent Socialization Panel Study, I show that those taking pro-choice and pro-life positions in 1982 subsequently changed their party identification to align with those views. By contrast, Democrats and Republicans, as of 1982, did not realign their abortion positions. The partisan conversions were concentrated among ideologically engaged (IE) respondents, especially IE women, who found themselves out of step with their party on abortion. By triggering changes in party identification, panelists’ abortion stances as early as 1982 influenced their vote choices downstream in the 1996 presidential election. Thus, issue-based realignment is viewed here in real time with data from a panel study.