Abortion is on midterm ballots in 4 states. Here’s what the polls — and faith groups — say.

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(RNS) — Officially, abortion is still a top policy priority for many religious leaders. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops calls preventing abortion its “preeminent priority,” and prominent conservative evangelicals continue to mobilize their voters around the issue.

But as Idaho, Missouri, Nevada and Virginia prepare to vote on abortion-related measures in the midterm elections, polling suggests it is less of a priority for voters than in other recent election cycles.

According to an October poll by Pew Research Center, significantly fewer registered voters from every religious group surveyed said abortion was “very important” in deciding who to vote for compared to other top issues like the economy (84%) and the future of democracy (73%). Overall, voters who said abortion is “very important” fell from 56% to 46% since the last midterm elections in 2022.

White evangelicals were most likely to say abortion was “very important” (58%), while less than half of the religiously unaffiliated (45%), Catholics (42%), Black Protestants (40%) and white non-evangelical Protestants (31%) said…