The Yes on 4 rally and March at Lake Eola Park Credit: Photo by Matt Keller Lehman

As early voting kicks off in Orange County on Monday, a new poll from the University of North Florida finds that an initiative to enshrine the right to abortion in Florida’s constitution just barely has the support it needs to pass.

According to the poll, conducted by UNF’s Public Opinion Lab, 60 percent of 977 likely Florida voters who were polled indicated a yes vote for Florida’s Amendment 4, while 32 percent said they would vote no, and 8 percent remained undecided.

Amendment 4, titled “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” would legalize abortion up to viability, equal to roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy, if approved through a yes vote. Currently, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, with few exceptions, under a bill approved by Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year.

The ballot summary for Amendment 4 reads in part, that “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Unlike several other states that have seen similar, successful abortion rights ballot initiatives over the last two years, all proposed constitutional amendments in Florida need at least 60 percent of voter support in order to pass, rather than just a majority.

Some Florida Republicans have tried unsuccessfully in the past to raise the bar to a supermajority of support needed, and could very well try such a ploy again in the future.

Dr. Michael Binder, a political science professor and faculty director of the Public Opinion Research Lab, predicts that the likelihood of Amendment 4’s passage will likely depend on who shows up to the polls. According to the state Division of Elections, 77 percent of registered voters in Florida cast ballots for the last presidential General Election in 2020, followed by a less-impressive 54 percent turnout for Florida’s midterm elections in 2022.

“Since campaigning has picked up against the amendment, support for abortion protection has dropped from 69% of likely voters back in July,” Binder pointed out in a statement, referring to an earlier poll his lab conducted. “Now, just barely reaching the 60% it needs to pass, it looks like the fate of abortion in Florida will come down to turnout on Election Day.”

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Floridians Protecting Freedom, a political committee of abortion rights advocates spearheading the Amendment 4 initiative, has spent over a year mobilizing support for the ballot measure, on-boarding more than 6,000 volunteers to assist with the campaign. Since their launch last May, the campaign has knocked on over 580,000 doors and made calls to more than 500,000 Floridians about the measure, according to a campaign spokesperson. They’ve also partnered with allied groups and pro-choice Florida politicians in order to get out the vote among college students, Hispanic and Latino voters, male voters, and Republicans who see Florida’s six-week ban as a step too far.

It’s been a collaborative, big-tent effort featuring key partners such as Planned Parenthood, the 1199 SEIU healthcare workers’ union, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Florida Rising.

While the campaign is largely backed financially by liberal-leaning organizations, the campaign itself is nonpartisan and has made efforts to reach conservative and independent voters by emphasizing the importance of limiting politicians from interfering in abortion-related decisions, and to leave that instead up to pregnant people, their families, and their doctors, who currently face felony charges if they provide abortion care in violation of state law.

Prior to 2022, when Florida’s 15-week abortion ban went into effect, Florida allowed for pregnant people to get an abortion up to the third trimester, or roughly 28 weeks of pregnancy. Now, those who are pregnant past six weeks and don’t qualify for exceptions are forced to either carry out their pregnancy, or travel to another state like Illinois or Virginia with fewer restrictions, provided they have the financial resources and the time to make that happen.

Nonprofit abortion funds like the Florida Access Network, which help finance travel and the cost of abortion for those in need, are overburdened, according to advocates involved, and are struggling to raise enough funds to meet the demand.

According to UNF’s poll, 56 percent of Florida respondents identified themselves to pollsters as “pro-choice,” while 34 percent said they were “pro-life,” and 7 percent said they fall somewhere in between. Among registered Democrats, 82 percent described themselves as pro-choice, compared to 34 percent of registered Republicans and 59 percent of independents who could say the same.

“It’s interesting that a majority of independents and over a third of Republicans identify as pro-choice,” Binder noted. “Even more, 24% of people who said they are pro-life also said they would vote yes, on Amendment 4. Now, some might say that’s just confusion about the ballot summary language, but we see the same thing among pro-lifers when 29% said they disagree with the Dobbs decision.”

The poll found that 46 percent of respondents disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned the right to have an abortion under the landmark Roe v. Wade case, allowing states to severely restrict or even ban abortion altogether. Forty-two percent of respondents from UNF’s poll said they agree with the decision, while 13 percent said they either didn’t know or refused to answer.

Since the Public Opinion Research Lab’s last poll on the issue in July, support for Amendment 4 has decreased, from 69 percent then to 60 percent in this latest poll, conducted from Oct. 7 through Oct. 18, pulling from a random sample of likely voters.

A lot has happened since July, however, that could have very well affected voters’ perspectives on the initiative. At DeSantis’ direction, multiple state departments in Florida have launched taxpayer-funded campaigns in opposition to Amendment 4, as well as Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative.

The state Department of Health earlier this month, even wrote letters to media broadcasters, threatening criminal charges if they continued to air a pro-Amendment 4 ad the department alleged were “false” and “dangerous.” Former DOH secretary John Wilson, who signed the letters, resigned from his job shortly after.

Floridians Protecting Freedom filed a lawsuit in federal court last week against the DeSantis administration over the threat, which they described as coercion and viewpoint discrimination. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, in response to the complaint, last week temporarily barred the health department from taking further action to stop broadcasters from airing Floridians Protecting Freedom’s ads. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: It’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker quipped in his order.

At least four political committees, spearheaded by Catholic dioceses and anti-abortion activists, have also launched campaigns to counter Florida’s Amendment 4 campaign, complimenting a PAC chaired by DeSantis’ chief of staff that aims to, in part, target Florida Amendment 4 and Amendment 3, concerning the legalization of marijuana.

Amendment 3, an initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana use for adults 21 and over if approved, currently has 66 percent of support from likely voters, according to the UNF poll. Just 32 percent of respondents said they would vote against it.

Early voting in Orange and Osceola Counties officially kicked off this morning, giving voters who can’t make it out on Election Day, Nov. 5, more time to head to the polls.

Early voting locations in Orange County will be open from from Oct. 21, 2024, through Nov. 3, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Early voting locations in Osceola County will similarly be open from Oct. 21, 2024, through Nov. 3, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Residents with vote-by-mail ballots should plan to return their ballots as soon as possible to ensure it’s reached by the Supervisors of Elections Office by Election Day, Nov. 5, at the latest. You can drop it off in your mailbox, a USPS box, or deliver it in-person to an early voting location or Supervisor of Elections Office.

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This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.