Hey there, it’s Peter. 

When news broke in Washington that the Supreme Court might be gutting Roe v. Wade this summer, three questions immediately surfaced: What does it mean for women? Who was the leaker? And of course, predictably: Who will this help in November?

Plenty of Democrats, and more than a few Twitter addicts, immediately started hashing out the political impact of the Roe news, a story that still hasn’t even reached many voters even as it saturates the news in Washington. With the cost of living still too high, and Joe Biden’s approval rating now lower than Donald Trump’s at this same point in his presidency, Democrats need something—anything—to help them jump start their base’s energy and prevent what could be a historic midterm loss come November.

But it’s too early to tell if the end of Roe will mean much at the ballot box, and the public polls released since the Politico leak offer only mixed signals as to whether the abortion rights battle will rally Democrats in a way that can slow the political and economic headwinds blowing in their face. In the process of parsing through the data, I was offered a look at a new survey from The Generation Lab, a polling firm focused on young voters, examining how millennials and Gen Z are thinking about abortion. Voters under 30 have never known a country in which abortion wasn’t safe and legal—and their votes are essential if Democrats want to avoid a drubbing this fall. 

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Joe’s Roe Problems

The conventional media narrative portrays the end of Roe as electoral rocket fuel for Democrats. The polling is more complicated.

Democrats, stunned and dismayed by the news that the Supreme Court is preparing to gut Roe v. Wade, are now hoping for a silver lining: that grassroots rage on the left, especially among women, will energize their base ahead of a midterm election that’s been tilting in the direction of a Republican landslide. Democrats, the thinking goes, might now have a culture war wedge issue of their own, allowing them to change the subject from a constipated economy and blast voters with the message that “ultra MAGA” Republicans are radical extremists hellbent on rolling back fundamental rights for all Americans. But the polls that have been released since Samuel Alito’s opinion leaked into public view suggest only modest gains in Democratic enthusiasm.

The headline numbers appear encouraging for Democrats, on the surface. A Morning Consult poll last week found that the share of Democrats who said they were “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting increased by 6 points since the Roe news leaked, a jump driven mostly by women. And a Monmouth poll out Thursday found that while the economy and cost of living continues to be top of mind for midterm voters, abortion had soared to the second most pressing issue. About a third of Democrats, and a quarter of independents, said that agreeing with a candidate on abortion policy is the top consideration in their vote. Four years ago, during a Democratic wave election, fewer than 10 percent of those voters said the same. 

At the same time, this is what Democrats and precious independent voters are telling pollsters right now, as the abortion wars dominate media coverage. And even with that story all over the news, it still hasn’t...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT