Pro-Life Advocates Made Election 2006 Better Than it Could Have Been 
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by Dave Andrusko
November 20, 2006
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of NRL News for the National Right to Life Committee.
While most of our readers are politically savvy, I suspect most have more important things to do with their lives than pour over a gazillion polls that purport to tell us what really "happened" election night. That’s for political junkies.
I’ve read my fair share, enough to know the immediate conventional wisdom and anticipate the next couple of changes in what "everybody knows." But here’s what you won’t read anywhere else but here. And understandably so, when you think about it.
If most of the "mainstream media" lick their chops at the prospects of pro-lifers being devoured, you can’t really expect them to get past the obvious. We took hits in both the House and Senate–that’s the obvious.
What takes some time and research to dig out is to figure out whether it was a candidate’s stand in favor of life that cost him or her their seat. Or, in fact, in most instances was a position in favor of life helpful?
Pro-abortion PACs like EMILY’s List didn’t merely have buckets-full of money this election cycle. They had entire wells’ worth of cash. EMILY’s List alone had $30 million to spend to get out their vote and run splashy ads. (And that doesn’t even account for the money spent by other pro-abortion organizations.)
NRL PAC’s figure was…well, a lot, lot less. Yet for all the humongous differential, we got the message out. Over one-fifth of the electorate (22%) heard or saw NRL PAC’s message, according to a national poll.
And being pro-life remained an advantage.
A whopping 36% of the total sample said that the abortion issue influenced their vote. Almost exactly two-thirds of that figure (23%) voted for candidates opposing abortion as compared to only 13% who voted for candidates favoring abortion. The pro-life advantage saved a number of candidates.
Those who lost typically were felled by other issues, the importance of which overrode or neutralized the advantage enjoyed on the abortion issue by the pro-life candidate.
And speaking of EMILY’s List, NRL PAC went head-to-head with the largest pro-abortion PAC in 18 contests. NRL PAC prevailed in 14 of the 18 — 78%!
You made a difference. A huge difference. The political terrain will be much different in two years.
What won’t be different is your commitment to the cause of unborn children.
