(Updated to clarify poll was of likely primary voters)
A new poll out Wednesday shows the Kansas abortion amendment getting a majority of support from Kansans, with one out of 10 voters still undecided, and hints that the campaign could be decided by turnout.
The poll done by the Kansas City firm co/efficient, published Wednesday by FiveThirtyEight, shows the amendment with 47% support compared to 43% for opponents going into the Aug. 2 election.
The amendment would reverse a 2019 state Supreme Court decision that found that abortion was a right protected by the state constititution.
The firm polled 1,557 likely primary voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.78 percentage points. The poll was done July 17-18.
It was done via mobile text responses and automated landline interviews.
The amendment seems to be drawing support generally from voters who are older, conservative, Republican and male who have a high school education, the poll shows.
It’s generally opposed by voters who are younger, liberal, Democratic and female who have a college or post-graduate education, the poll shows.
The demographics were very similar to the polling done before Tennessee voters decided on a similar constitutional amendment, which prevailed at the polls in 2014 with 53% of the vote.
A 2014 poll done by Middle Tennessee State University before that election found 47% of white Tennessee voters supported the amendment compared to 18% of minorities.
Similarly, more men favored the amendment (44%) than women (34%).
Support also was significantly higher among self-described evangelical Christians (43%) than among those who did not identify themselves that way. (29%).
That poll showed the amendment winning but still had 15% undecided, but 6% wouldn’t reveal how they would have voted.
Glen Halva-Neubauer, who studies abortion politics at Furman University, said there are positive take-aways from both sides in the new poll on the Kansas amendment.
Halva-Neubauer noted that amendment supporters can take heart in the fact that 68% of the Kansans polled who supported the amendment were Republican.
If more Republicans go to the polls for the primary like they have in the past – a distinct possibility since there are other GOP races on the August ballot – then that helps the amendment, he said.
However, Halva-Neubauer pointed to two other key findings in the poll that might be a positive bellwether for opponents of the amendment.
The poll found that 43% of those polled opposed any restrictions on abortion and 31% of those surveyed believe the amendment allows lawmakers to ban abortion.
The amendment doesn’t ban abortion, but opponents say it will clear a path for the Legislature to ban the procedure – a central message of the campaign against the amendment.
“When coupled with the fact that a majority of those surveyed know that the amendment will either ban abortion in the Sunflower State or remove constitutional protection for it in the Kansas Constitution, it should be helpful to the amendment’s opponents,” he said.
Halva-Neubauer said this is really a campaign of who gets their voters out to the polls on Election Day, pointing to the division between the age brackets on the issue.
Seventy-five percent of Kansas voters under 35 said they opposed the amendment and 52% of voters from age 35 to 44 were against it as well, the poll showed.
Meanwhile, 52% of voters 45 to 54 said they supported the amendment and 51% of voters from 55 to 64 also were supportive as well. Half of voters over 65 backed the amendment.
“Turnout will be crucial to the outcome,” Halva-Neubauer said.
“If young people turn out in numbers larger than normal, the opponents have a chance to defeat the amendment,” he said.
“If older folks – always inclined to go to the polls, especially in off-year, primary elections – (turnout) it would assist amendment advocates,” he said.
“A larger turnout in the Kansas City metro would also bolster the chances for the amendment’s defeat, while higher turnouts in the more conservative regions would assist the question’s champion,” he said.
Kansas has seen more and more young voters turning out to vote in recent years, but will it be enough to offset the voting tendencies of older voters on Aug. 2?
Go back to 2014 – the year former Gov. Sam Brownback was reelected – and just 13% of voters ages 18 to 24 years old cast a ballot in that general election, census data shows.
Turnout for young adults paled in comparison to older voters who turned out in a much larger percentage as Republicans kept their lock on state government.
In 2016, about 34% of Kansas voters from 18 to 24 years old participated in the general election, census data shows. It was one of the lowest rates in the country.
By 2020, it had grown 14 percentage points to 48.4%, one of the highest percentage increases in the nation, census data shows.
Younger voters in Kansas have narrowed the voting gap with seniors, but there is still a large chasm.
For instance, there was about a 53 percentage point disparity between voters in the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket and voters 65 and older in 2014.
By 2020, the gap had narrowed, but it was still substantial at about 27 percentage points.
Democratic state Rep. Brandon Woodard of Lenexa believes that young voters are energized to turn out for this primary.
“I’m talking to young Republicans and they’re talking about climate change and talking about abortion rights, which is not a conversation I would have ever expected to have with Republicans,” said Woodard, who represents one of the younger legislative districts.
If younger voters turn out, he said, the better chance there is of defeating the amendment.
“I’m seeing – at least in my district – people are incredibly motivated and showing up in droves already with early voting,” he said.
“Johnson County will decide this election, the same way we’re going to decide the governor’s race in November,” Woodard said.
“Young people, millenial voters are the largest voting bloc” in Johnson County, he said.
Voters ranging in age from 18 to 44, a bracket that includes the outer edges of the millennial generation and those voters who told pollsters they opposed the amendment, make up about 46% of Johnson County’s electorate.
“Because of that, if they continue to turnout to vote in ways they did in 2018 and 2020, then I see this being defeated,” he said.
