I think that's a smaller component that you believe. I think the overwhelming majority of GOP supporters look at their pay stubs and tax bill and decide solely based on who is going to let them keep a larger percentage of the gross. Everything else is just rationalization. I guess like you I base this on my experience. I know a lot of solid republican voters, and none is a born againer (although a couple Catholics I'm friends with a solidly anti-abortion, though also solidly rich). The key to reaching the tax set is convincing them that percentages be damned, if they continue to vote GOP they can keep 100% of nothing after Trump ruins our economy. If the GOP got 100% of the only-cares-about-abortion vote and nothing else, they would get 0 electoral votes, 0 senate seats, and probably a few house seats.
Gallup puts it at six percent.I think that's a smaller component that you believe.
Highly religious white Protestants constitute about 15% of the adult population, and by aggregating data from 2016 through 2019, we get a reasonable estimate that about four in 10 among this group say that abortion should be totally illegal. This is higher than among Trump supporters or Republicans (or the general population) yet still leaves more than half of the evangelical group who favor legalized abortion, at least in certain circumstances.
That sounds right. Compared to Castro's 9% approval rating among Americans in his later years, I'd say that 6% is pretty fucking close to irrelevant as a voting bloc. I think what the "centrist" voter would like to hear from a candidate is some version of, "I don't support killing fetuses that could survive on their own outside the womb except in extreme medical circumstances." I'll bet that's the default stance of like 80% of the population, but you wouldn't know it from anyone's platform planks.
This conversation is aimed at influencing the opinions of people who are still committed to vote Trump come november. If the reason they state is religious, specifically Democrat support of Abortion, what can you say? My experience tells me that educating them that abortion rates drop when fact based sex education is taught and contraception is available is fruitless. It is the legality or criminality of the act that is important, nothing else.
C'mon. Castro and Congress each get like a 10% approval rating on surveys. There's always a subset of people you should just write off. I think that subset is small enough that they could be irrelevant if moneyed interests start jumping ship. After all, it was the moneyed interests who specifically brought them into politics to shore up their voting bloc, which was waning in the late 70s to early 80s. I don't so much care what people believe on their own time, but I would be as happy an anyone to see religious zealots once again be irrelevant in the political sphere.