CV NEWS FEED // The latest Vanderbilt poll has found the majority of Tennessee voters are “pro-choice” and believe IVF should be legalized in the state, but also a majority will vote for President Trump.
The results from the Vanderbilt University semi-annual poll are a marked shift in the state’s voter stance ahead of November’s elections. Fifty-two percent of respondents identify as “definitely” or “somewhat” pro-choice, and 33% identify as “definitely” pro-life. In the May 2022 poll, 48% identified as definitely or somewhat pro-choice.
With respect to IVF, 82% of respondents in the latest poll said they believed the practice should be legal, while 58% also said they did not consider it a moral issue. As one local Nashville news outlet observed in its report, “This was quite the bipartisan support as Democrats, Independents, non-MAGA Republicans, and MAGA Republicans who responded all share majority support for IVF.”
The poll also discovered significant political differences between men and women in the survey. There was a nearly 20-point margin between the two genders on issues such as the election, abortion, and gun control.
On the topic of the upcoming election, 47% of respondents said they would vote for former President Donald Trump in November, while 29% said they planned to vote for President Joe Biden. Male respondents were more likely to choose Trump, at a rate 11 points higher than female respondents.
As Vanderbilt notes in its analysis of the poll results, Tennesseans widely agreed on a number of gun control issues across the state, but they sharply disagreed along party lines about whether teachers should be allowed to carry weapons on school property, with an even 47% in favor and 47% opposed.
“MAGA Republicans (77 percent) and non-MAGA Republicans (71 percent) skew heavily in support of the option of armed teachers, while only 11 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Independents are in favor,” Vanderbilt stated.
Notably, 63% of Tennesseans said they believed that United States democracy is under attack. What they said the source of threat is varied based on their political affiliation. Democrat respondents identified the threat with Republicans and Russia, while Republicans laid the blame on Democrats and China.
