Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Joseph Calo
Hi everyone! I’m a current junior at Wesleyan from Reading, MA. I am an American government major, but also have taken many psychology courses. Outside of class, I am on the men’s hockey team, serve on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and enjoy exercising, watching movies, and playing with my dogs in my free time.
Abstract: In contemporary politics, abortion is an extremely significant, hot-button issue, with individuals of liberal or conservative stances holding contrasting beliefs. However, the importance and weight individuals place on the issue differs, with gender and political stances across the spectrum influencing abortion priority regardless of their opinions. The ideological background of an individual may be an indicator of how much value one places on the abortion issue, for it is a very foundational feature of the liberal voter base, and not as much of a focus among conservative Americans. In this study, I used a binary variable constructed using the results of the 2020 pre-election survey of the American National Election Studies (ANES) to examine how a person’s political ideology predicts how important abortion is to them as a political priority. Significant differences were found between ideology and abortion priority among respondents at the extreme sides of the spectrum compared to those who are less radical or identify as “moderates.” The relationship between political ideology in abortion priority was found to be statistically significant, while the significant difference between “extremists” and “moderates” remained when the relationship was controlled by gender. I anticipate this study to be a starting point for more sophisticated political priority models that can assess the causal relationship between political ideology and abortion priority, as well as examine how priority throughout the political spectrum differs across multiple political issues.
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