A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, voters in Ohio who turned out for Tuesday’s election are still feeling the sting, according to the preliminary results of CNN’s Ohio exit poll.
Roughly 6 in 10 express negative feelings about the decision, similar to sentiments among midterm voters in Ohio last year. About 4 in 10 call themselves outright angry about it, roughly double the share of those who are enthusiastic about the court’s 2022 decision. About 45% of female voters say they’re angry, compared with about a third of male voters.
Two measures are on the ballot in this election in Ohio. One of them, Issue 1, would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, while Issue 2 would create a new law legalizing and regulating recreational marijuana.
The Ohio electorate turning out for the vote largely favors legal abortion – roughly 3 in 10 say the procedure should be legal in all cases and about a third that it should be legal in most cases, similar to the 2022 electorate.
About 3 in 10 say it should be legal in all cases, and about one-tenth that it should never be legal, but the majority of the electorate stands somewhere in between. Notably, while Democrats lead Republicans when it comes to which party voters trust to handle abortion, it’s by only a single-digit margin.
Meanwhile, voters who turned out in favor of Issue 1 (and voted “yes”) hold strong views on abortion and Roe, more so than those who turned out in opposition (and voted “no”).
About 6 in 10 “yes” voters say they’re angry that Roe was overturned, compared with only about 4 in 10 “no” voters who say they are enthusiastic about the decision. And while roughly half of “yes” voters say abortion should always be legal, only about one-quarter of “no” voters want it to be illegal in all circumstances.
The Ohio CNN Exit Poll is a combination of in-person interviews with Election Day voters and early in-person voters, along with telephone and online polls measuring the views of absentee by-mail and early voters. It was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. In-person interviews on Election Day were conducted at a random sample of 35 Ohio polling locations among 668 Election Day voters and at a random sample of 10 early in-person voting locations, among 1,188 early in-person voters. The results also include 842 interviews with early and absentee voters conducted by phone, online or by text. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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