For all of the Democratic campaign rhetoric accusing pro-lifers of conducting a “war on women,” it turns out that 29% of Democrats are pro-life. Now the antiabortion Susan B. Anthony List is doing some creative campaigning to enlist pro-life Democrat women to persuade them to vote their convictions.
From Melinda Henneberger, Antiabortion lobby is making a pitch to a new demographic: Democratic women – The Washington Post:
The antiabortion Susan B. Anthony List is targeting a very different kind of voter this cycle: For the first time, the lobby and advocacy group is pitching women in Democratic households.
The experiment is being tried in the tight Iowa Senate race between Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst and Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley.
That approach sounds counterintuitive, but 29 percent of Democrats identify themselves as “pro-life” on surveys. And while Democratic women have been blanketed with “war on women” messages, they’ve been mostly ignored by those on the other side of the abortion issue.
Over the past year, the SBA List has been trying the more scientific message-testing methods that Democrats have been using for years, looking less at what voters say about why they vote as they do — few of us really know what flips our electoral switches, it turns out — and more at what messages actually do move them.
Work done by Adam Schaeffer, of the conservative data-based consulting firm Evolving Strategies, found that in last year’s Virginia governor’s race, 10 percent more Democratic women who received just one robo-call changed sides, according to SBA List consultant Frank Cannon. The call the women received said that Democrat Terry McAuliffe opposed any limits on abortion. And 10 percent of the Democratic women who received that message either switched their vote or stayed home, as compared with those in a control group who did not receive a call.
In a second test, a randomly selected group of persuadable Florida women in Democratic households were told that Democratic congressional candidate Alex Sink opposed any limits on abortion after 20 weeks. Again, 10 percent more women in Democratic households who got that message told follow-up interviewers that they either had switched to vote Republican or had skipped the contest.
Obviously, peeling off 10 percent of those voters could decide a close race. So the SBA List is hoping the Iowa test is one it can pitch to donors ahead of the 2016 general election.
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