Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has heavily centered around the issue of abortion, despite recent polling indicating that it is not a top-five concern for most voters. With just over a week into her presidential bid, Harris and her team have consistently pushed abortion as one of the key issues in their campaign through advertisements, a memo, and speeches delivered by the Vice President herself. However, according to a July Harvard-Harris poll, abortion is not even within the top five concerns for voters, with the January 6th Capitol riot, another issue emphasized by Harris’ campaign, failing to make it into the top twenty issues.
The three most popular responses when asked to identify “the most important issues facing the country today” were prices and inflation (37%), immigration (33%), and economy and jobs (27. They were followed closely by health care (17%), crime and drugs (16%), and “women’s rights,” or abortion (16. In a campaign memo released last week, the Harris campaign tried to capitalize on this issue by citing figures from various polls that claim she could beat President Trump. Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sought to paint abortion as a leading issue in her strategy, referring to a CNN poll conducted before the 2022 midterms.
According to the CNN poll, nearly three-quarters of voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections. A majority of voters called it extremely important, and 76% of respondents cited abortion as an essential factor in the election, with almost half ranking it as very important. However, O’Malley Dillon omitted to mention that only 49% classified abortion as “very important,” which is a significant decline from the 75% who believed it was “very important” in the CNN poll conducted 20 months prior.
Furthermore, when asked to select the most important issue in the race, respondents in the YouGov/Economist survey cited by O’Malley Dillon chose abortion as their sixth-most-important concern, with only seven percent of them selecting it. Inflation and prices ranked first at 25%, immigration followed closely behind at 13%, and jobs and the economy took third place at 12. Healthcare garnered seven percent of the responses, while climate change also received seven percent.
The memo also states that “upholding the rule of law” is another key issue where the campaign can make inroads with voters. However, the Harvard-Harris poll discovered that the January 6th Capitol riot was only rated as the 22nd most pressing issue, receiving just four percent of the responses. The Harvard-Harris poll surveyed 2,196 registered voters from July 26-28, with a margin of error of ± 2.1.