MINNEAPOLIS — In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, ending decades of constitutional protections for abortions.
According to a new poll, most Minnesotans oppose the court’s decision to overturn Roe, though a significant number of voters say they agree with the move.
DO YOU AGREE WITH THE SUPREME COURT’S DECISION TO OVERTURN ROE V. WADE?
Of the 800 voters who participated in the latest KARE 11/Star Tribune/MPR News Minnesota Poll, nearly 52% said they oppose SCOTUS’ decision to overturn the landmark case. Another 40% of respondents said they support the decision, but 8% of voters polled between Sept. 12-14 are undecided.
A majority of female voters said they oppose SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade, at 57%. Comparatively, 46% of men polled agree that they oppose the decision. Thirty-five percent of women support ending the guaranteed right to abortion, as did 46% of men. Among both men and women, 8% are not sure how they feel.
More young voters said they oppose ending Roe v. Wade compared to older voters. Sixty-two percent of voters 18-34 said they oppose the Supreme Court’s decision, while just 47% of voters 65 and older said the same.
Most Democrats (85%) oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, while most Minnesota Republicans (79%) said they support it. A majority of Independent voters (53%) said they oppose the move, but 36% were against it.
DO YOU THINK ABORTION SHOULD BE LEGAL IN ALL CASES, LEGAL IN MOST CASES, ILLEGAL IN MOST CASES OR ILLEGAL IN ALL CASES?
Even with the end of Roe v. Wade, access to abortion remains protected in Minnesota because of case law. In the 1995 case of Doe v. Gomez, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution protects abortion rights.
Most Minnesotans agree that abortion should be legal in some or all cases, according to a new KARE 11/Star Tribune/MPR News Minnesota poll.
Of those polled, 30% of voters said they believe abortion should be legal in all cases, with another 25% saying abortion should be legal in most cases.
Forty-one percent of voters said abortion should be illegal in most cases, with 2% saying it should be illegal in all cases.
A majority of female voters said abortion should be legal in all cases or most cases, 61%, while 38% said it should be illegal in all or most cases.
A larger number of male voters said they think abortion should be illegal in most cases, at 48%; however, that number is equal to the combined number of men who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases (48%).
According to the poll, more young voters agree that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to older voters. Among all age groups, only about 2-3% of voters think abortion should always be illegal.
Compared to Republicans, Democrats are much more split over how often abortion should be legal. Poll data shows that 61% of Democratic voters say it should always be legal, while another 27% say it should be legal in most cases. Eleven percent of Democrats agreed with 75% of Republicans that abortion should be illegal in most cases.
Only a combined 18% of GOP voters said abortion should be legal in any capacity.
Independent voters are even more divided: less than a quarter said abortion should be legal in all cases, 33% said it should be legal in most cases, 41% think it should be illegal in most cases, and less than 1% said it should always be illegal.
METHODOLOGY
The findings of this Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll are based on live interviews conducted Sept. 12 to Sept. 14, 2022, with 800 Minnesota registered voters who indicated they are likely to vote in the November general election. The poll was conducted for the Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio News and KARE 11 by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy Inc.
Those interviewed were randomly selected from a phone-matched Minnesota voter registration list that included both landline and cell phone numbers. Quotas were assigned to reflect voter registration by county. The interviews were conducted via landline (28%) and cell phone (72%).
The margin of sampling error for this sample of 800 registered voters, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than ± 3.5 percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the "true" figure would fall within that range if all voters were surveyed. The margin of error is higher for any subgroup, such as a gender or age grouping.
The self-identified party affiliation of the respondents is 35% Democrats, 32% Republicans and 33% independents or other.
Sampling error does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion surveys, such as nonresponse, question wording or context effects. In addition, news events may have affected opinions during the period the poll was taken.
The demographic profile of this poll of likely voters is an accurate reflection of their respective voter populations. This determination is based on more than 100 statewide polls conducted by Mason-Dixon in Minnesota over the past 34 years – a period that spans eight presidential election cycles that began in 1988.
Watch more Minnesota politics:
Watch the latest political coverage from the Land of 10,000 Lakes in our YouTube playlist: