Definition
The Reproductive Rights Voter Score indicates a person's likelihood to believe the federal government should allow abortions in all or most cases and only vote for candidates who share their views on abortion.
Technical Details
The model was built from the following two survey questions:
Question 1: Which of the following is closest to your view on abortion?
- The federal government should allow abortions in ALL cases
- The federal government should allow abortions in MOST cases
- The federal government should only allow abortions in A FEW Cases
- The federal government should NEVER allow abortions
Question 2: If the candidate from your preferred party does not share your views on abortion, you would most likely:
- Vote for the candidate from your preferred party anyway
- Vote for a candidate from a different party who shares your views on abortion
- Not vote for any candidate in that race
- Don't know / other response
- Rather not say
Respondents who answered "allow abortion in all cases" or "allow abortion in most cases" to Question 1, AND answered "vote for a candidate from a different party" or "not vote for any candidate in that race" to Question 2, are labeled as reproductive rights voters. All other respondents are labeled as non-reproductive rights voters.
The Reproductive Right Voter Score was trained on polling data from the Summer 2024 Murmuration poll. We collected 6,694 responses on phone and online from registered voters in April and May of 2024. The survey used stratified random sampling to ensure national representativeness across age, race, gender, partisanship, education and geography.
The model was trained using gradient-boosted decision trees. Model features were drawn from the Atlas by Murmuration dataset, which includes demographic (age, race, gender, etc.), commercial, geographic, and vote history information for all registered voters nationally.
Scores range from 0-100, where higher scores indicate greater likelihood that a voter is both supportive of reproductive rights and reproductive rights is decisive in determining which candidates they vote for.
We validated the model's accuracy using a held-out set of 1,242 polling respondents (20% of the original survey sample) whose data was not used during model development. Among individuals with scores in the top 20% of the Reproductive Rights Voter Score, 73% are actual reproductive rights voters—making them 52% more likely to be reproductive rights voters than the average voter.
Use Cases
The Reproductive Rights Voter Score can be used in a variety of ways when building a campaign strategy and planning voter engagement. It can be used independently or in conjunction with other scores. Below are a few examples for how partners could use this score:
- GOTV Efforts Where Reproductive Rights Are on the Ballot: In states where abortion-related initiatives and/or candidates running on an abortion-related platform are on the ballot, this score can help identify the voters who are motivated by this issue. These individuals are strong targets for get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns. Not only are they more likely to turn out to support reproductive rights, but once mobilized, the vast majority of them are likely to support other items on the ballot. To pinpoint optimal GOTV targets, we recommend combining this score with a turnout score. By targeting voters with medium to low turnout scores and high Reproductive Rights Voter Scores, partners can use the reproductive rights issue to provide an extra nudge to people who need some encouragement to cast their ballot. This approach allows partners to leverage reproductive rights as a motivating issue to turn people out to vote and increase overall voter participation across multiple ballot items and races.
- Building Broad Coalitions: This score can be used in conjunction with the Partisan Score to pinpoint more conservative voters who support reproductive rights. By layering this score with Partisan Scores below 50, partners can identify likely Republican (or Republican-leaning) voters who favor reproductive rights and who might be willing to vote against their party to safeguard that access. This allows an organization to identify voters who can be brought into their coalition due to their support for abortion rights even if those voters might not support other traditionally "progressive" policies. The result is that partners can build broader universes and bring more people into their outreach messaging plan who would have otherwise not been included.
- Messaging, Fundraising and Volunteer Recruitment: The Reproductive Rights Voter Score can be used to understand the salience of reproductive rights as an issue either at the community or individual level. We would expect those with high Reproductive Rights Voter Scores to be more responsive to messaging that focuses on safeguarding reproductive rights access. Furthermore, these individuals might be likely to donate or volunteer for a campaign that centers around this issue. At the community level, areas with a large proportion of voters with high Reproductive Rights Voter Scores might be particularly good places for general public outreach.
Targeting Table
The table below shows the score values associated with each decile to help you more easily target using the Reproductive Rights Voter Score nationally. Note: these score cutoffs may be different in your local districts.
| To target the top... | Set the minimum score value as... |
| 10% | 67 |
| 20% | 63 |
| 30% | 58 |
| 40% | 54 |
| 50% | 48 |
| 60% | 41 |
| 70% | 33 |
| 80% | 26 |
| 90% | 19 |
| 100% | 9 |