Democrat pollster Celinda Lake finds Millennials don’t know Roe v Wade, some think it was from 200 years ago
A new poll shows that as many as 57% of Millennials know little to nothing about Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion a constitutional right by judicial fiat.
According to a Democratic pollster, Millennials do not know what Roe v. Wade is about, or when abortion was legalized, with many believing it happened after the American Revolution, nearly 200 years before it was decided.
“Millennials think that Roe v. Wade happened right after the American Revolution,” Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research, said on a Friday episode of “What America’s Thinking,” Hill.TV’s new show about polling and public opinion.
“They have no idea that there was ever a time when abortions were illegal. They certainly don’t want to go back to those times,” Lake said.
The data was lifted from a 2013 survey, which indicated that most Americans (62%) know that Roe v. Wade dealt with abortion rather than school desegregation or some other issue. But the rest either guess incorrectly (17%) or do not know what the case was about (20%).
Among those ages 50 to 64, 74% know that Roe v. Wade dealt with abortion, the highest percentage of any age group. Among those younger than 30, just 44% know this.
Fully 91% of those with post-graduate education know it dealt with abortion, as do 79% of college graduates, 63% of those with only some college experience and 47% of those with no more than a high school education.
Identical percentages of women and men (62% each) are aware that Roe dealt with abortion. Nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) answered this question correctly, compared with 63% of independents and 57% of Democrats.
In April, a Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 65 percent of 18- to 29-year-old Americans said they think that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 51 percent of Americans over the age of 65 said they agreed.