Asked by AFN about his Election Day predictions, Gary Bauer says he is concerned about a record number of young women casting a vote for the Harris-Walz ticket. Nobody to the “right of center” is voting for the Democrat ticket, he says, but nobody should ignore an issue that is important to many Democrats and is getting them to the polls.
“She is very popular among young women,” he says of Harris. “Nobody knows whether those young women could turn out in massive numbers, voting on the abortion issue, and end up blowing the polling out of the window."
An election poll by Gallup, conducted in early October, said abortion is among the most important five issues for Democrat voters. The other issues they named are preserving democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court justices, health care and education.
Among those five issues, abortion could be linked to at least two of them. Democrats blame the right-leaning Supreme Court for overturning Roe v Wade, and Democrats refer to abortion as "health care" or "reproductive rights" for women.
Even the issue of democracy could be tied to abortion, too, since Democrat voters are being warned by Harris that "reproductive freedom" is in danger Nov. 5.
"I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law," Harris vowed at an Oct. 27 political rally in Houston, Texas.
For Republican voters in the Gallup poll, immigration, terrorism and national security, crime, and taxes are their top issues.
During the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats and liberal cable news pundits claimed young female voters turned out in record high numbers to punish the Republican Party after the Dobbs abortion ruling.
“Once again, it’s the women who saved us,” Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, said during election coverage on MSNBC.
That assessment was disputed by exit polling, conducted by Pew Research, that concluded the GOP had closed the “gender gap” on Election Day. Pew’s polling suggested the GOP had improved its performance among women: 48% support in 2022 versus 40% in 2018.
Like many other conservative Christian leaders, Bauer says Evangelicals must cast a ballot.
“All you have to do,” he urges, “is get out of bed, and go down the street to the polling place, and vote in the privacy of the voting booth, where you don't have to tell anybody what you did.”
