Former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments may have cost him the 2024 election, experts said Newsweek.

Trump was already in a campaign that was widely expected to be close. But now that Vice President Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling is in effect, the Republican candidate’s dreams of a second term could now be dashed by the very judges he appointed.

Trump’s third Supreme Court appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett cemented the court’s conservative supermajority. And it was the six conservative Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned the ruling. Roe v. Wade with his 2022 Dobbs decision.

The rollback of reproductive rights sparked a national outcry immediately after the Supreme Court’s ruling. But it was not until the next two years that voters made it clear that they were angry with the court’s conservative justices. At the ballot box, even in “red” states, voters strongly rejected changes to the law that challenged the right to abortion, but strongly supported those that enshrined that right in law.

In November, it will be Trump’s turn to face angry voters.

Lanae Erickson, senior vice president of social policy, education and public policy at Third Way, said Newsweek that in such a close race, any issue could potentially cost a candidate the election, “but the decision in the Dobbs case could be at the top of that list.”

“Since Dobbs, every single time abortion rights have been on the ballot, voters have supported reproductive freedom and Democrats have outperformed,” Erickson said.

Because of this issue, Democrats have already successfully dashed Republican hopes of a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. This year, 10 states will vote on abortion, more than ever before in a single election year.

At the national level, abortion is ranked as the second most important election issue after the economy, which includes jobs and the stock market, according to the latest poll by New York Times/Siena College shows: Although 22 percent of voters say the economy is their top priority, 14 percent say abortion is the most important issue.

This trend has also played out in swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, where abortion ranks second only to the economy. In Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, abortion is even tied with immigration, with 15 percent, 12 percent and 13 percent of voters ranking abortion and immigration as their most important voting issue, respectively. In North Carolina, 16 percent of voters said abortion was the most important issue.

Trump is 4 points behind Harris in Arizona and 3 points behind in North Carolina, while he is 7 points ahead in Georgia and 2 points ahead in Nevada.

Although abortion still lags behind the economic debate in key swing states, it has become the most important issue for three key voting groups: women, young voters and black voters.

In the August poll, 22 percent of women, 18 percent of those under 30 and 20 percent of black Americans said abortion was the most important issue. 18 percent, 15 percent and 13 percent respectively named the economy as their most important issue.

All three groups will be crucial to a victory in 2024. Harris leads Trump by 15 percent among women, 10 percent among young voters and a whopping 62 percent among black voters.

“The key areas where abortion will have an impact on these (educated female) voters are the affluent suburbs of major cities in the swing states – the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Milwaukee and Madison, Atlanta, Phoenix and Las Vegas,” said political analyst Steve Schier News week.

Schier also said the more urban a swing state is, the more abortion will help Harris in the election. Urban swing states include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to the 2020 census.

Strategist Jay Townsend said Newsweek that if Harris wins in November, “reproductive freedom will be one of the reasons.”

“The only way for pro-choice voters to get what they want is to vote for Harris. And most of them rightly believe that Trump has taken that right away with his Supreme Court nominees,” Townsend said. “Pro-choice voters are also a larger group than ardent pro-life voters. The math works out for Harris, but not for Trump.”

“Trump gave Harris a gift in his first term. It would be foolish of her to squander it,” he said.

After the Dobbs ruling, Harris became a central figure in the Biden campaign’s efforts to keep the issue of abortion in the national spotlight. She traveled the United States on behalf of the White House to advocate for reproductive rights and embody the administration’s commitment to defending those rights. In March, she made what is believed to be the first official visit by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.

At the Democratic National Convention last week, Harris made this message clear.

“Tonight in America, too many women are unable to make those decisions,” Harris said in her acceptance speech. “And let’s be clear about how it came to this: Donald Trump handpicked members of the U.S. Supreme Court to take away their reproductive freedom. And now he’s bragging about it.”

She linked him to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump has tried to distance himself from. He warned that he was done with restricting reproductive rights and asked simply: “Why exactly don’t they trust women?”

Erickson said the biggest political advantage Democrats gained from the Dobbs decision was the “opportunity to reclaim their status as the party of freedom.”

“Democrats want this to be a free country, and they trust voters to make their own decisions about how they want to live their lives,” she said. “Republicans want to control the private medical decisions of every American and override parents’ judgment about raising their own children. One of those things is popular. The other is political poison.”

She pointed out that Trump was already very vulnerable on this issue and that his choice of Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate only made this problem “exponentially worse.”

“His vice presidential candidate insults women and puts every single aspect of their lives on the news every day,” Erickson said.

Newsweek emailed Trump’s campaign team Tuesday afternoon for comment.