Forty-three percent of Republican voters and 38 percent of Democrats say abortion will be very important to their voting decisions, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
"Abortion has been and will continue to be a mobilizing issue for social conservatives voting in the 2008 presidential election," said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior analyst for bioethics at Focus on the Family Action.
"The starkly polarized views of the two political parties based on respective party platforms — Republicans as pro-life and Democrats as pro-abortion — dictate which candidates get on the national ballot, and that informs how people vote for president."
For Democrats, the most important issue at the ballot box is health care (82 percent), while Republicans say terrorism is the most important issue (77 percent).
