HOW MANY ABORTION VOTERS?

I've been wondering how many voters decide solely on the candidates' stance on abortion and an AP story that appeared in my local paper indicates that it is between 9% and 13%. Of those, the GOP gets most of the votes. Here's more from the article:

Poll: Americans inconsistent on abortion
By NANCY BENAC Associated Press Writer
Mar 12, 6:58 PM EST

A solid majority long have felt that Roe v. Wade should be upheld. Yet most support at least some restrictions on when abortions can be performed. "Rock solid in its absolutely contradictory opinions" is how public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman describes the nation's mind-set.

"When we as a society make up our minds about something, as we have about abortion, most people tend to pull away from it," says Bowman, an American Enterprise Institute fellow who has studied abortion opinion over the decades. "Something really significant has to occur to bring Americans back into the debate."

In this latest poll, 19 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all cases; 16 percent said it should never be legal; 6 percent did not know. That left nearly three-fifths somewhere in between, believing abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.

Dicing the same data a different way, 52 percent of those surveyed thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases; 43 percent said it should be illegal most or all of the time.

The survey, taken Feb. 28-March 2, found that men's and women's views were similar, although men were a little more likely to be undecided.

With slight shifts one way or another, this is about where Americans have been for decades.

In the AP poll, two-thirds of Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while two-thirds of Republicans said it should be illegal all or most of the time.

Bowman said that about 9 percent to 13 percent of voters tend to cast their ballots based on a candidate's stance on abortion, with Republicans tending to benefit the most from these single-issue voters at the national level while results are more mixed in state races. The recent developments could be significant in rallying voters, particularly in off-year elections, she said.