Let's begin with the obvious: Children born in any given year arrive at voting age in 18 years; conversely, children not born in a given year are "Missing Voters" 18 years later. Permanently so, unless someone discovers a way to give birth to a teenager in a nine-month gestation period. This table gives the number of Missing Voters from abortion and election years affected:

The question arises: Who would these Missing Voters have been if they had reached voting age? What would their values have been? How would they have voted? What impact would they have had on the great debates in America, including the abortion debate? Here's what we know from several generations of social science research about children:

• They tend to absorb the values of their parents.

• They tend to have the same political views as their family (parents, siblings, immediate relatives) and share common views on political causes.

• They tend to develop the same lifestyle as their family.

I remember the guy at my 30th high school class reunion who looked over the people there and remarked, "I can't believe I came in person, while everyone else sent their parents!"

With these factors in mind, the internationally respected survey research firm Wirthlin Worldwide was commissioned to ask 2,000 respondents in a stratified random sample of adults the following question: "As far as you know, has anyone close to you had an abortion?" The emphasis here was on "close to you" in order to bring to mind only those people inside the respondents' circle of socio-demographically homogeneous family and friends.

Of the 2,000 respondents, 636 responded "yes." The various socio-demographic characteristics of these respondents were then imposed on the abortion statistics (Table 1, above), with a special emphasis on the 2000 and 2004 general elections to see what impact they likely would have made had the Missing Voters been present to vote in those two elections.

Given the extremely close result in 2000, these voters could have been a crucial factor in the outcome. This is borne out when viewed by political party as defined in the Wirthlin survey.

There is a significant difference between Republicans with someone close to them who have had an abortion, and Democrats with someone close to them who have had an abortion:

Table 2: Missing Republicans vs. Missing Democrats
Party	% of total abortions	% of party w/abortions	Party as % of electorate	Party loss/gain
Republican	35%	28%	39%	+4
Independent	16%	30%	17%
Democrat	49%	36%	44%	-5

This tells us:

• Republicans have fewer abortions than their proportion of the population, Democrats have more than their proportion of the population. Democrats account for 30% more abortions than Republicans (49% vs. 35%).

• The more ideologically Democratic the voters are (self-identified liberals), the more abortions they have. The more ideologically Republican the voters are (self-identified conservatives), the fewer abortions they have.

This isn't particularly surprising given the core constituencies of both political parties. But translating percentages into numbers for the purpose of evaluating their impact on politics makes the importance of these numbers real. It's one thing to quote percentages and statistics, it's quite another to look at actual human beings. For example:

• There are 19,748,000 Democrats who are not with us today. (49.37 percent of 40 million).

• There are 13,900,000 Republican who are not with us today. (34.75 percent of 40 million).

• By comparison, then, the Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans have.

These Missing Americans--and particularly the millions of Missing Voters--when compounded over time are of enormous political consequence:

Table 3: Missing voters by political party, 2000 general election
Republican	2,096,406
Independent	958,086
Democrat	2,978,605
Total	6,033,097

Let's look at the 2000 election to see what those 6,033,097 Missing Voters meant to its outcome. What would these Missing Voters have meant to the election in Florida?

Table 4: Florida 2000, with and without Missing Voters
Candidate	Vote	Missing voters	Combined vote
Bush	2,912,790	107,799	3,020,589
Gore	2,912,253	153,163	3,065,416

In the actual popular vote for president in the 2000 general election in Florida, George W. Bush was declared the winner by 537 votes. But if the 260,962 Missing Voters of Florida had been present to vote, Al Gore would have won by 45,366 votes. Missing Voters--through decisions made in the 1970s and early 1980s, encouraged and emboldened by the feminist movement at the height of its power--altered the outcome of the U.S. presidency a generation later, in a way proponents of legal abortion could not have imagined.

Examining these results through a partisan political lens, the Democrats have given the Republicans a decided advantage in electoral politics, one that grows with each election. Moreover, it is an advantage that they can never regain. Even if abortion were declared illegal today, and every single person complied with the decision, the advantage would continue to grow until the 2020 election, and would stay at that level throughout the voting lifetime of most Americans living today.

The popular vote in these seven states, with 63 electoral votes in 2000, was less than 1% apart between the two candidates. By adding the votes of the Missing Voters, Democrats could have picked up Florida, and solidified their vote in the other six states (where election challenges could certainly have been seriously considered). The Democrats could have increased their popular and electoral count beyond the scrutiny of the courts and "the court of public opinion."

Table 5: The seven closest states from 2000, with Missing Voters added
State/EVs	Bush 2000	Gore 2000	Missing voters	2000/revised 2004 totals
Florida 25 (27)	2,912,790	2,912,253	R: 107,799 D: 153,163	'00: R by 537 '04: D by 45,366
Iowa 7	634,373	638,517	R: 23,556 D: 33,469	'00: D by 4,144 '04: D by 14,057
Nevada 4 (5)	301,575	279,978	R: 10,762 D: 15,291	'00: R by 21,597 '04: R by 17,068
New Hampshire 4	273,559	266,348	R: 9,992 D: 14,196	'00: R by 7,211 '04: R by 3,006
New Mexico 5	286,417	286,783	R: 10,608 D: 15,072	'00: D by 366 '04: D by 4,830
Oregon 7	713,577	720,342	R: 26,536 D: 37,703	'00: D by 6,765 '04: D by 17,932
Wisconsin 11 (10)	1,237,279	1,242,987	R: 45,900 D: 65,216	'00: D by 5,708 '04: D by 25,023
This table shows the actual vote from 2000, then shows what the change would be in 2004 with all else remaining the same, except that the Missing Voters were added. Numbers in parentheses are 2004 electoral votes.

A similar scenario can be constructed for the U.S. Senate races this fall. The Republican advantages are real: more Democrats (19) are up than Republicans (15), more Democrats are retiring than Republicans (and from advantageous states for Republicans), and Republicans usually do better in a presidential election year. Generally accepted "givens" are:

• Incumbents typically win. In fact, 96% of incumbent U. S. Senators win re-election. The McCain-Feingold legislation will not change this. No legislation passed in the name of reform--including the 1974 post-Watergate campaign finance reform legislation--has ever increased the challenger advantage or lessened the incumbent advantage, no matter what the intended goal.

• In open-seat contests, the party vacating the position cannot "hand over" the seat to the new party nominee. Traditional factors are far more important, such as a strong candidate, solid organization, appealing issues and sound finance. Still, long-term party allegiance is a major factor.

Consequently, the impact of Missing Voters could be considerable in states where the electorate is evenly divided between the two parties over a period of elections. Consider the open seats whose incumbents have chosen not to run for re-election. The following figures represent all votes cast in those states in 1996 and 2000 in the last two presidential year general elections for candidates to Congress--a traditional bellwether for predicting base federal candidate vote.

Table 6: Open Senate seats, 2004
State	Incumbent	Party	GOP adv/disadv
Colorado	Ben Nighthorse Campbell	R (R)	1.122
Florida	Bob Graham	D (D)	1.202
Georgia	Zell Miller	D (R)	0.970
Illinois	Peter Fitzgerald	R (D)	0.941
Louisiana	John Breaux	D (D)	0.981
North Carolina	John Edwards	D (R)	1.050
Oklahoma	Don Nickles	R (R)	1.151
South Carolina	Fritz Hollings	D (R)	1.096
The party of the retiring senator is listed first; the party of the state's other senator is in parentheses.

If voting patterns in the past two presidential elections (combined) hold true for 2004, then five of these states should be an advantage for the GOP: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Conversely, three states would lean Democratic: Georgia, Illinois and Louisiana.

What do the Missing Voters take away from the Democrats in each state?

Most major reporting and analyzing institutions would rate each of the open seats, with the possible exception of Illinois, as "too close to call" at this stage of the campaign. When election time comes, these Missing Voters will be missed. The most expensive campaign a candidate will ever run, the adage goes, is the one he or she loses. For half of these candidates, this will be that most expensive campaign.

Table 8: Missing by ideology
Ideology	% of pop	% of total abortions	% of group having abortions
Liberal	37%	47%	41%
Moderate	5%	5%	31%
Conservative	59%	48%	26%

Look at the results:

• Six out of 10 Americans call themselves conservatives. Only a quarter of them are having abortions.

• A little more than one-third of Americans call themselves liberals. More than four in 10 are having abortions.

• This means that liberals are having one third more abortions than conservatives.

By combining party and ideology, an even sharper contrast comes into focus:

Table 9: Liberal Democrats vs. conservative Republicans
Ideology/party	% of pop	% of total abortions	% of group having abortions
Liberal/Democrat	40%	48%	38%
Moderate/Independent	11%	10%	30%
Conservative/Republican	49%	41%	27%

Liberal Democrats are having both more abortions--and more abortions as a percentage of their ideological and political group--than either of the other groupings.

As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results minuscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies. It is a grim irony lost on them, for which they will pay dearly in elections to come.