Despite a loud minority of pro-abortion extremists, a 15-week restriction is popular with most Granite Staters—including young voters, women, and undeclared voters
CONCORD, N.H. – Data Orbital, a top-10 national polling firm, has concluded a new poll of Granite Staters’ views on abortion in cooperation with Cornerstone Policy Research. The poll goes into greater detail than many previous similar surveys.
The poll finds a large majority of New Hampshire voters would favor a 15-week abortion limit that preserves the state’s existing exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies and the mother’s health. This would be a substantial expansion of New Hampshire’s existing abortion law, which currently allows elective abortion until six months of pregnancy for any reason.
While Granite Staters support elective abortion in the earliest months of pregnancy, 60-64% of New Hampshire voters support protecting preborn children at 15 weeks of pregnancy, or a little under four months.
A 15-week law would have significant support among all political groups. 61-62% of undeclared voters, including 60-63% of undeclared women, would favor limiting elective abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy—as would 82-88% of Republican women. Even 35-43% of registered Democrats would favor the new restriction.
Data Orbital, which spoke to a representative cross-section of 600 New Hampshire voters, found broad support for a 15-week prohibition across many demographic groups, including 58-64% of voters aged 18-34 and a majority of both white and nonwhite voters.
FiveThirtyEight ranks Data Orbital in the top 3% most-accurate pollsters—more reliable than CNN, Quinnipiac, Pew, and Gallup.
“This new survey confirms what Cornerstone has said for years: Granite State voters are centrists on abortion,” said Shannon McGinley, executive director of Cornerstone. “While a 6-week abortion restriction is unthinkable in New Hampshire, it is also clear that Granite Staters are not committed to the extreme pro-abortion position of elective abortion up to 6 months. While out-of-state progressive groups have spent millions advocating for abortion until birth in New Hampshire, they have failed to move the needle among free-thinking Granite State voters.”
The new poll also underscores the weakness of New Hampshire’s Republican establishment. In 2022, while running for his fourth term as governor, Chris Sununu became the most pro-abortion GOP governor in United States history the first Republican governor to support the total legalization of late-term elective abortion.
New Hampshire’s current Republican nominee for governor, Kelly Ayotte, has largely followed in Sununu’s footsteps, pledging to veto any abortion restriction whatsoever before 6 months—even hinting by omission that she might not veto a bill repealing the current 6-month abortion restriction.
“Many New Hampshire conservatives, including some of our critics, believe that Republicans who capitulate on late-term abortion are making a shrewd political calculation,” said McGinley. “The numbers tell a different story. In reality, Governor Sununu’s pivot was a fundamentally emotional decision: a futile attempt to appease a loud minority of voters willing to protest outside his office.”
This poll shows that Kelly Ayotte’s pledge to defend 23-week elective abortions puts her to the left of most young voters, older voters, white voters, nonwhite voters, undeclared voters, and women in New Hampshire.
Each year, the United States performs approximately 40,000 abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy—about twice the annual number of criminal homicides. Video and photographic evidence increasingly reveal that monstrous elective late-term abortions of fully-formed babies are practiced at clinics around the country. In New Hampshire, a 15-week restriction could prohibit hundreds of additional abortions each year.
Although New Hampshire does not collect abortion statistics, Dartmouth, the New Hampshire Medical Society, and others have strongly and explicitly defended late-term elective abortion, providing strong evidence that they perform these procedures in the Granite State.
See the poll’s executive summary here and crosstabs of the data here.
Tell your representatives and candidates that it’s time to stop listening to the shrieking of out-of-state organizations and start listening to the real people of New Hampshire.
