That pre-election warning comes from recent polling by Cygnal, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based polling and survey research firm suggests.
Founded in 2007, the firm has built a reputation for accuracy, being named the most accurate private pollster by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight for four consecutive election cycles.
Now research from the group finds that 74% of likely Republican primary voters say a candidate’s position on abortion is important when deciding who they will support. If these likely voters decide they don’t like a candidate, many of them won’t be at the polls to back a lesser choice. They’ll just stay home, the research finds.
These are voters who remain passionate about the life issue, and if Republicans haven’t abandoned the pro-life position as party policy, the leader, President Donald Trump, clearly abandoned the issue from his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
He failed to mention it.
"As anyone who looks at the polling daily knows, the 2026 elections are going to be critical for the GOP," said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life and Students for Life Action, told AFN.
"There is a very slim majority in Washington, D.C., in the House and the Senate," she continued. "Most predictions are that Republicans will lose, and when you're faced with a very close elections like this, one of the key principles of the grassroots politics is you have turn out your base.”
Trump could have helped Republicans with just a little pro-life encouragement in his record-long address.
“It was a missed opportunity to not hear the president speak about his work in signing the BBB (Big Beautiful Bill) that defunded Planned Parenthood for a year of our federal taxpayer dollars,” Hawkins said.
Calls to light up the switchboard
Hawkins urges pro-life advocates to reach out to the president and White House and express their disappointment in being left out of Trump’s speech.
"Ask him why his speechwriters didn't put abortion, didn't mention our efforts to protect life in his speech," said Hawkins. "Ask him why the White House continues this narrative as if IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) and getting cheaper IVF drugs is moral when we know it's anything but moral.”
The administration isn’t doing enough to support moral family planning, she said.
While pro-lifers question the administration’s commitment to the life question, almost a third of these voters who responded to the Cygnal survey say they’ll have “decreased enthusiasm” for the mid-terms if Republican candidates are wobbly on or outright oppose the pro-life position.
For Republicans, that’s damaging news by itself, but it doesn’t mean only lost voters. It also means fewer people knocking on doors for GOP candidates.
This isn’t only about the candidates. The views of voters are formed by Republicans – like Trump – who are currently in office, John Rogers, a senior partner and pollster at Cygnal, said on “Washington Watch” Wednesday.
“A third of Republican primary voters say that they would have decreased enthusiasm both to vote and to volunteer in the midterm general elections if they feel like Republican leaders in D.C. are abandoning or weakening pro-life principles,” Rogers told show host Tony Perkins.
Earlier this year Trump told U.S. House Republicans they should be “a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment during contentious discussions over extending Affordable Care Act (AC) health care subsidies.
They Hyde Amendment since 1976 has banned federal funding for abortion with rare exceptions like rape, incest and endangered life of the mother.
Just a year ago Trump signed an executive order reinforcing the Hyde Amendment and restricting taxpayer funding for abortion including through Medicaid and international aid.
Trump framed the call for flexibility as a pragmatic move to pass a health care deal and reduce costs for Americans, warning that inaction could hurt Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
Pro-life leaders, including Thomas Jipping of Advancing American Freedom, strongly criticized the remarks, saying, “We should hold the line on that. Democrats and liberals should be the ones to be flexible when it comes to forcing people to pay for abortions.”
Eighty-four percent of likely GOP primary voters oppose federal tax dollars being used for abortion, Rogers said. Seventy-nine percent say it’s important to keep the Hyde Amendment in place.
“This is an issue that's core to the worldview of most Republican voters, a vast majority of Republican voters across the country,” Rogers said.
In his first term Trump delivered numerous pro-life wins. The most notable were his appointment of three mostly conservative Supreme Court justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – but there was much more. To name a few, Trump:
-- Reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy which bans U.S. funding for overseas non-government organizations who promote or perform abortion.
-- Inserted Title X language which disqualifies clinics that perform abortions from receiving family planning funds.
-- Strengthened conscience protections for health care workers.
-- Signed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act which requires medical care for infants born alive after failed abortions.
GOP playing with fire on abortion
In spite of his efforts, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. has increased slightly since the Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 thanks in large part to the access of mail-in abortion drugs.
“A vast majority of Republican primary voters in our poll said that they were unaware that the abortion rate has gone up since the Dobbs decision came down,” Rogers said.
According to the KFF, national abortion volume rose from 1.06 million in 2023 to 1.14 million in 2024, with data from the first half of 2025 showing a continued upward trend.
Republicans are playing with fire as the base is bound to learn the numbers, Rogers says.
“If you're in a battleground district in Georgia, for instance, or North Carolina or the Midwest, any decrease in enthusiasm or any decrease in the turnout of GOP voters, even if it's just 5%, could have really a catastrophic effect in some of those key battleground districts.”
