The Salience of Abortion Rights

March 2023
Project Prompt
Morning Consult Politics analyst, Eli Yokely, requested a series of visualizations to show the change of abortion and reproductive rights as a top voting issue before the Dobbs leak, during midterm elections in 2022, and after 2022 midterms.  
My Approach
Through a series of interactive maps and simple charts, I wanted to highlight the precipitous fall reproductive rights had as a "top of mind" issue in the voting booth following the 2022 midterms.
Tools Used
  • Everviz/Highcharts
  • Illustrator
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Excel
Collaborators
    Context

    One of the most commonly ran survey batteries at Morning Consult asks respondents to rank the issues they consider their "top issues" when voting. When the Dobbs decision leaked in the May 2022, abortion, birth control, and equal pay quickly became a top issue for many voters, regardless of ideological leanings.

    Eli Yokely, U.S. Politics Analyst for Morning Consult, approached the Data Viz team with a data set containing the share and percentage point change of voters who list abortion, birth control, and equal pay as top issue. He narrowed the date range of the data to be the surveys conducted before the Dobbs leak, during the 2022 midterm election season, and at the beginning of 2023 (post-midterm elections.

    As with most voter related data, there is a desire to know what the respondents' political leanings or party affiliation is as well as their location. Eli was able to provide the data by a range of political leanings (likely Democratic voter through toss-up to likely Republican) along with location by congressional district. Eli wanted to use all three demographic cuts, so I had to find a way that showed trend along with comparison.

    For the political leaning series, I decided to use area trend line charts in a mini-multiple format as it more effectively gives a sense of mass, is easy to compare across the demos, and was a simple way to introduce the custom date range used in this data along with visual elements that would be used throughout the piece.

    The District-Level Salience of Abortion and Birth Control Among Voters
    The share of voters in each district who said abortion, birth control, and equal pay are among their top issues when voting for federal office, over time
    Click the right arrow to view the three periods of survey results. Hover over the map to view the percentage of voters in each congressional district who listed abortion, birth control, and equal pay as among their top voting issues.

    For the map, I wanted to ensure the user was able to access the data populating the choropleth map through a tooltip. To accomplish this, I turned to Everviz, a Highcharts-based charting software Morning Consult uses for all interactive charts. In Everviz, I was able to pull the most recent Congressional map into the editor, program a tooltip, and create a tabbed layout so the user can more easily see the trend within the data.

    In addition to these two charts, my colleague Sam Elbouez created a table with the district-level percentage point change organized by political leanings. This allows the reader to see the overall fall of abortion salience since the 2022 midterm elections.

    View the Full Piece

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