The Party of Death?

Tomorrow (Jan 22) is the Annual March for Life. It is also the 30th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision which has lead to the death of more than fifty million American children. This can be a contentious issue, with lots of name calling and exaggeration for points.

There is even a book called "The Party of Death", accusing Democrats of being "pro-death".

Is there any truth to this? Can some numbers shed light on this?

Whenever I see polls on abortion, the break down is roughly 50/50. I've also seen that Republicans are better than 60/40 on the side of life. About 40% of people identify as Republican or Democrat, with 20% claiming "independent" (although independent candidates usually get less than 10% of the vote, so "wishy-washy" is a more accurate term :)


Ok, so in the general population:
40% * 60% = 24% pro-life Republicans
40% * 40% = 16% pro-death Republicans
50% - 24% = 26% pro-life Others
100%-24%-16%-26% = 34% pro-death Others


This is telling! In the pro-life camp, people are well balanced between Republican and Other. That is, there is little correlation between being pro-life and being Republican. At the same time, in the Others group, people are more than two times(! 34% vs 16%) more likely to be pro-death than pro-life.

Can we break-out Democrats from Independents? I found one poll that pro-life Democrats are 35% and Independents are 44%.

So in the general population:
40% * 35% = 14% pro-life Democrats
20% * 44% = 8.8% pro-life Independents
40% * 65% = 26% pro-death Democrats
20% * 56% = 11.2% pro-death Independent

The pro-life number (14+8.8=22.8) is a little short of the expected 26%, probably due to actually less than 50% of people are pro-life, and me mixing data from polls with guesstimates...

So, this clears the Independents. About 50% are pro-death. It is the Democrats who hold the 2-to-1 ratio (26 to 14) for pro-death to pro-life.


So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that all the Democrat candidates for president are pro-death. That's what the people want.