With Election Day just over three weeks away, Spectrum News is taking a look at three top issues shaping this year’s midterms. 

While the economy is consistently polled to be the most pressing concern, last summer’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision protecting the federal right to an abortion reshaped this political season, with uncertain results. 

What You Need To Know

  • Democrats are hoping the Supreme Court's ruling that overturned the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision protecting the federal right to an abortion gives them a leg-up in this year's midterm elections

  • The issue scrambled the normal prognostications: that Democrats would lose because of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, high inflation, and voters' traditional desire for change

  • The battle is playing out in states across the country in a number of ways – with interest groups, candidates and political parties going all-out in the months and weeks before Nov. 8

  • Despite Democrats' focus on abortion, the economy remains reliably at the top of the list of concerns voiced by voters both in battleground states and nationwide

It was the topic of a speech Tuesday by President Joe Biden. Abortion access has been among the top issues cited by voters in three battleground states – Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia – visited by Spectrum News in the leadup to the midterms. And at least five states have abortion referendums on the ballot. 

Polling shows that at least a plurality of Americans support abortion rights, with restrictions. The ruling gave Democrats momentum – like this summer, when Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure to strip statewide abortion protections. The unexpected move in a Republican-leaning state came less than two months after the Supreme Court decision, and the unusually high voter turnout reflected what Democrats hope is an indication of what’s to come this November. 

Indeed, Democrats say new voter registration across the country has soared since this summer, especially among women.

The issue scrambled the normal prognostications: that Democrats would lose because of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, high inflation, and voters' traditional desire for change. Historically, midterm elections tend to shift away from the party in power in the White House. This year, Democrats are hoping the issue of abortion access will help them buck that trend. 

The battle is playing out in states across the country in a number of ways – with interest groups, candidates and political parties going all-out in the months and weeks before Nov. 8.  

In Allentown, Pennsylvania a few weeks before Election Day, leaves were turning colors, lawn signs had popped up and advocates on both sides of the abortion fight knocked on potential voters’ doors. 

Individuals from one group – Students for Life of America – told people about a local pregnancy resource center, where women who otherwise may have wanted abortions are instead encouraged to give birth.

“We just want to get women connected with resources,” Anna Gidosh, a member of Students for Life of America, told Spectrum News. 

The group’s website is blunter: “Recruit, train and mobilize the pro-life generation to abolish abortion.”

About 50 minutes away, canvassers were aiming to protect that exact right. 

“I want to make sure that every person is free to make their own decisions about what they think is best about their health and their life,” Ellis Adler of Planned Parenthood told Spectrum News. 

Abortion access is also a central focus in Pennsylvania’s governor's race, a seat for which GOP State Sen. Doug Mastriano is facing off against Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general. Democrats are seizing on the moment by surging money to ads mentioning abortion, and Shapiro has targeted Mastriano for his hardline stance on the issue.

Mastriano – a Trump-supported Republican whose views are firmly in the mold of his backer – has called for murder charges against women getting an abortion. 

In Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional district, incumbent Rep. Susan Wild, a Democrat, is running a television ad attacking her opponent Lisa Scheller’s position on abortion rights.

“I talk to women all the time who remember the dark days of illegal abortions. I've had women cry to me. I still have a hard time believing that we're still having to fight this fight,” Wild says in a recent advertisement, continuing: “My opponents say that she was open to the idea of a national ban on abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, to me is unconscionable. It's not the role of Lisa Scheller or anybody in the government to be telling you what you can do with your body.”

Mastriano and Scheller, like many Republicans across the country, are focusing their campaigns on other issues, namely crime and the economy.

“The Democratic candidates want to remind voters that abortion is under threat and Republicans would rather talk about something else – like inflation, the border, and especially crime,” Ziad Munson, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University and author of the book “Abortion Politics,” said in an interview. 

According to OpenSecrets, Pennsylvania has seen more than $121 million in total itemized contributions during this year’s midterm elections, one of the highest figures in the nation. Democrats are also flooding money to abortion-related ads in races around the country; according to a mid-September analysis from the Associated Press, the party had already spent $124 million just in television ads referencing abortion. That’s a dramatic increase from the 2018, when Democrats spent around $6 million in television ads related to abortion, per the AP.

Another closely-watched state in this year’s midterms is Arizona, whose ban on abortion dates back to the Civil War, before Arizona was a state. In mid-October, a court allowed the procedures to continue – at least until mid-November, while it considers the case, meaning the state is currently in legal limbo.

The state’s GOP candidate for governor, Kari Lake, has called it a great law, while her Democratic rival Katie Hobbs is stumping on protecting abortion.

Among Lake’s top issues are securing the border with Mexico, election security and abortion access, as she is staunchly pro-life. Hobbs, who has served as Arizona’s secretary of state since 2019, pledged to support and expand protections for abortion access and agrees on the need for comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.

The state’s Senate race has also featured the issue of abortion, as incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly slammed Republican opponent Blake Masters for his stance on the issue, which NBC News reported softened as the governor’s race heated up. Originally, Masters’ campaign website said he was “100% pro-life"; the site was subsequently updated to indicate Masters’ support of a nationwide ban on abortion beginning in the third trimester, per NBC. 

And then there’s Georgia. Abortion in the Peach State is legal up until around five or six weeks of pregnancy, a law that was triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision in June. Often referred to as a “heartbeat bill,” the deadline often comes before many women know they are pregnant, and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019.

The issue has taken on much more personal tones in this year’s fight for the Senate seat. 

The leading contenders are Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and former football great Herschel Walker, the Republican. Walker has faced repeated accusations that he paid for a former girlfriend’s abortion despite advocating for a near-total ban on the procedure nationwide during his campaign. It’s an accusation he has repeatedly denied.  

Despite all the attention, it’s unclear how much abortion will matter come Election Day.

“The conventional wisdom of analysts who study election results has been that there's a lot of talk about abortion, but it's seldom the defining issue that determines who wins or loses,” Munson told Spectrum News.

That uncertainty is reflected in polls across a number of battleground states. 

Voters, much like the candidates they will cast ballots for, are split on the issue, voicing a variety of opinions in conversations with Spectrum News across Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

“So the first thing that really comes to mind would be pro-life. So, you know, we're big followers of God,” Georgia voter Clayton Knapp told Spectrum News. 

 “What are the biggest issues that I weigh? Well, I would say health care for sure, women's health care in particular, and education,” another Georgia voter said. 

The economy remains reliably at the top of the list of concerns voiced by voters both in battleground states and nationwide. According to an early September poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist, a majority of Americans listed inflation and the economy as their number-one issues, though far more Republicans than Democrats answered as such. The second most important issue was abortion, followed by health care. 

A more recent poll of likely voters from the New York Times / Siena College found the economy and inflation as the top two issues, with 26% and 18% of respondents respectively listing them as such. Abortion and immigration tied for the third-most important issue, each receiving 5%.

So what will all the rhetoric, lobbying and millions of dollars in advertisements amount to? How much – or whether at all – the issue of abortion influences the election won’t be known until November.