Post-election data shows pro-abortion messaging failed to galvanize young women in the 2024 election cycle, suggesting Gen Z women care far less about — or for — pro-abortion policies than political strategists expected.
It’s big news — but pollsters, per usual, are missing the point.
David Shor, head data scientist at a prominent Democrat consulting firm, joined The New York Times’ Ezra Klein last week to break down last year’s decisive presidential election. The two acknowledged young voters became more conservative but, like most analysts, attributed the shift primarily to young men.
It’s true: men aged 18 to 29 moved further right then their female counterparts — about 15 points, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).
But Gen Z women also became significantly more conservative. More than 40% of women aged 18 to 29 voted Republican in 2024, compared to just 33% in the 2020 presidential election. The shift spanned races, with white and black women each moving six points to the right and latina women moving 10 points.
This rightward shift is particularly important because, unlike young men, young women were supposed to be a shoo-in for former Vice President Kamala Harris. In a May 2024 piece for The New York Times, two political analysts predicted young women would overwhelmingly support abortion “rights.”
The article, titled “[Abortion] is the Democrats’ Best Shot in 2024. And They’re Spending Like Crazy on It,” reads:
Pro-abortion candidates leaned hard into this perceived advantage. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its allies spent $175 million on pro-abortion TV ads in 2024 — more than 30% of their total ad spending.
Just one day before the election, Politico reported Harris’ pro-abortion media campaign was “helping her close the gap with Trump on handling voters’ No. 1 issue: the economy.”
“Abortion rights and Trump’s history of misogynistic statements is fueling a historic gender gap,” it further assessed, implying that women would vote on abortion and men on the economy.
These predictions did not come true. Abortion was not a mobilizing issue for American voters, particularly compared to the economy. In one of Shor’s surveys asking voters to rank issues by importance, 79% of respondents ranked the “cost of living, inflation” as more important than abortion.
Abortion paled in comparison to the economy even among Gen Z women, who are frequently portrayed as abortion’s biggest advocates. In the CIRCLE survey, 39% of women aged 18 to 29 identified “the economy and jobs” as their top policy priority.
Only 17% listed “abortion.”
The data is clear: the Democrat party spent big on an issue women, particularly young women, didn’t care about nearly as much as it thought. It effectively reduced an entire voting block to a stereotype — a caricature of an activist who cares about nothing more than having sex with no strings attached
This misunderstanding was so foundational that the party poured money into it until the bitter end. Democrats spent more than $2 million in mid-October on last minute pro-abortion messaging in swing states, even after polls showed women valued economic policy more highly.
But pro-abortion messaging clearly isn’t the silver bullet the Democrat party believed it to be.
Additional Articles and Resources
Harris’ Abortion Issue Bid Fails
Young People on the Pro-Life Movement’s Future
Young Person Talks to Young People at National March for Life
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