Abortion rights fueled Democrats in Pennsylvania’s midterms. Will it motivate voters again in 2024?

David McCormick hasn’t even officially jumped into Pennsylvania’s Senate race, but Democrats already have an ad out blasting his past comments on abortion rights.

“David McCormick is too extreme for Pennsylvania,” the Facebook ad says, after a snippet of the Republican former hedge fund manager showed him saying in an April 2022 debate he supports an abortion ban except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

The small ad buy attacking a politician who is likely to run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is just a preview of what’s to come. Democrats in Pennsylvania are already campaigning on abortion hoping the issue, which boosted them in the midterms, will keep Republicans on guard and motivate their base in a state Supreme Court race this fall and in 2024.

“We’re just getting started. The stakes in the next election could not be higher,” Democratic National Committee chair Jamie Harrison said in a call with reporters Wednesday, one of dozens to mark one year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The abortion issue helped Democrats in Pennsylvania and across the country win close races in 2022 despite a weak economy and slumping approval ratings for President Joe Biden. The renewed focus on abortion comes as some Republicans have called for a national abortion ban and Democrats argue that even in states such as Pennsylvania, where abortion is legal, obstacles to receiving care remain.

Republicans, for their part, face a conundrum: The issue that once motivated their base now shows signs of being politically toxic. Polls show top GOP candidates’ stances on abortion are largely out of step with the majority of Americans’ views.

“It’s no question one of the things that Republicans are studying most after the midterms,” said GOP strategist Brock McCleary. “It is safe to say that it had as much of an impact as almost anything else in terms of Republicans underperforming expectations.”

As for McCormick’s stance, his spokesperson told The Inquirer on Thursday that he also supports abortion in cases of rape and incest — an expansion of the debate answer he gave last year during the GOP Senate primary, which he narrowly lost to Mehmet Oz. He’s widely expected to run again but hasn’t indicated when he may announce.

As soon as Politico published the leaked Dobbs decision in early May 2022, Democrats running for office in Pennsylvania started sounding the alarm that women’s reproductive rights were under attack.

Voting registration spiked among women and young voters.

Democrats aired more than one million political ads mentioning abortion in 2022, a 500% increase over 2020, according to ad monitoring site AdImpact. Meanwhile, Republican ads mentioning abortion plummeted in the last year.

In polls, likely voters named the economy as the top issue confronting Pennsylvania but when asked what issue was motivating them to vote, abortion topped the list.

“Undoubtedly, abortion was an important driver and it went a long way toward explaining the outcome, which was in some ways unprecedented,” said pollster Berwood Yost, with Franklin and Marshall College.

Pennsylvania abortion laws haven’t changed in the last year, and permit termination through 23 weeks of pregnancy. But the midterm stakes were particularly high for abortion rights supporters. With a Republican-controlled legislature and an open race for governor, Gov. Josh Shapiro ran on a platform of protecting access while State Sen. Doug Mastriano supported a total abortion ban with no exceptions.

Single-issue abortion voters have not historically been a huge voting bloc, but after the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned the issue’s importance grew. And Democrats expanded their messaging to warn their base that other freedoms were at risk.

“Abortion is sort of code for extremism,” McCleary, the GOP strategist, said. “And if you look at all the ads that were run against Republicans they talk about abortion but the word extremism was as prominent in those as anything else. It’s the debate around extremism that Republicans need to engage in.”

With Shapiro in office and Democrats narrowly controlling the Pennsylvania House, immediate threats to abortion access in the state aren’t as clear and present as in 2022.

That could benefit Republicans, who performed better in parts of New York and California in the midterms than they were expected to, despite the abortion issue taking center stage.

But Pennsylvania is far from solidly blue, which makes it vulnerable, said Signe Espinoza, executive director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania.

“The threat was real and still is real because we lost the federal protection,” Espinoza said. “Our message is to stay alert and continue to push all leaders to do more in this moment.”

Public support for abortion rights has only strengthened in the last year as Republican legislatures and governors have taken steps to limit abortion access. A majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but many are open to restrictions.

“I think the increasingly radical extremist proposals we’re seeing are going to keep it on the front burner,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon.

A recent Franklin and Marshall Poll found that Republican-leaning Independent voters thought the Democratic Party was closer to the mainstream opinion on abortion than the GOP.

“That’s a fundamental issue Republicans face,” said Yost, the pollster.

Abortion’s role in the presidential race will depend on the GOP nominee, the state of the economy, and other issues that could bubble up and take center stage.

Some candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, have run unabashedly on an anti-abortion platform, promising a federal ban. Others have expressed a range of views on whether they would support a federal ban, and how many weeks into a pregnancy they would allow abortions, if at all.

Congressional Democrats see abortion as a winning issue, particularly in suburban areas. Army veteran Ashley Ehasz is again challenging U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who has represented his Bucks County district since 2016.

Ehasz said abortion was a primary reason she sought a rematch. “It absolutely is still an issue — it is the issue,” she said this week, calling Fitzpatrick an “anti-choice extremist.”

Chris Gustafson, a spokesperson with the National Republican Campaign Committee, the GOP’s House campaign arm, said Democrats were the extremists on the issue. “We will not take lectures from the party that supports abortion up to the moment of birth,” he said.

The most immediate test of how abortion rights impact Pennsylvania politics will be this November’s race to fill an open seat on the state Supreme Court, where justices hold power over the future of abortion in the state. Democrats currently hold a 4-2 majority, and Democrat Dan McCaffery faces Republican Carolyn Carluccio in the November general election.

The court has heard several abortion cases and is currently examining a challenge to a state law that restricts the use of public funds to help women get abortions.

Carluccio, a Montgomery County judge, who beat a more conservative opponent in her primary, is endorsed by the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.

After winning the primary, McCaffery tweeted: “Voting rights, worker’s rights, women’s reproductive rights ... I will not let you down.”