Ballot Backfire?

I’ll be writing about a few more random thoughts about specific issues in this election in the coming days. My fuller election analysis is here. Today I want to highlight the success and failure of the nine abortion access ballot initiatives.

There were nine states that had ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion access in their state constitutions – Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota. In every one of those states except South Dakota, those ballot initiatives received over 50% of the vote, most with support of 55% of voters or greater, with the exception of Missouri which was significantly closer.  In Florida, however, the amendment failed only because it fell just short of the 60% required to become law.

These victories in seven out of nine states, as well as the strong showing in Florida, continue the now long list of victories for abortion rights in the wake of the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Enshrining abortion access in these state constitutions is an uncontestable good, but we will see if the protection that now offers will survive a GOP push for a national abortion ban or a strict enforcement of the Comstock Act by the Trump administration. Similarly, voters in Missouri and Montana, where Republicans control all the branches of government, will need to be aware of how these amendments might be interpreted and constricted by the courts and legislature, much as Missouri’s Good Government amendment which passed in 2018 was neutered by its courts and its legislature.

As an electoral strategy, however, it appears that these ballot initiatives may have actually backfired. The hope was that having abortion access on the ballot would bring voters out to the polls who would then also support the Democratic nominee and repudiate the man most responsible for ending Roe v. Wade and making these ballot initiatives necessary to begin with, as well as the Republican candidates who support him. Instead, millions of voters across the country voted for abortion access while also voting for Trump. Why?

According to the ever-erroneous David Leonhardt at the New York Times, it should have been clear to the Democrats that “abortion had played a modest role in the [2022] midterms. If anything, it would probably play an even smaller role in 2024”. His “evidence” for this, after actually admitting the issue “might have helped flip a few House elections” in 2022, was that the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, a state that elected a Democrat to that position once in the prior 32 years, ran heavily on the abortion issue and lost badly. Of course, one year later, Ohio passed an abortion access amendment largely by building on that failed Democratic gubernatorial campaign.

Leonhardt also thinks the salience of the abortion issue was further reduced because “Trump seemed to moderate his abortion stance, backing away from a national ban and saying he would allow states to decide their own policies” and because “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, her running mate, refused to answer questions about whether they supported any abortion restrictions — and most Americans do. Finally, the demise of Roe has not led to a sharp decline in abortion access, thanks to efforts by advocates to provide pills through the mail.” This is just fantasy. Trump took multiple positions on abortion during the campaign but the media and people like Leonhardt never pinned him down on the issue and instead (again) left the impression that was most beneficial to Trump. Of course, Leonhardt then accuses Harris/Walz of being the ones actually dodging the abortion question by bringing up an issue that as far as I know never made any impression in the campaign at all. And, my God, the idea that abortions increasing where it’s legal negates the issue, when women are literally dying where it’s not, is frankly sick.

The more realistic explanation was right there already in Leonhardt’s piece; it doesn’t require the convoluted reasoning Leonhardt employs; and it came directly from an abortion access/Trump voter, if only Leonhardt had listened (to steal one of his favorite themes about Democrats). She literally said, “OK, you can vote for the Republican candidate while still supporting your views on reproductive health.” Exactly. These state abortion amendments gave voters the option of believing their vote would protect abortion access so that they were free of that concern when it came to voting for Trump. Whether that belief or possible rationalization is well-founded will be made clear in the coming years. The fact that Democrats could not exploit numerous statements and policy papers by Trump and the Republicans that advocated a federal nationwide abortion ban speaks to the failure of the media as described above and the information environment that many of these voters exist in.

To be clear, the fact that these abortion amendments passed this year and in prior years is an uncontrovertibly good thing. They provide real protection of abortion rights for the moment. As an electoral strategy, however, they appear to have failed. Now, post-election, some of our favorite pundits say that anything that limits the success of the Democratic electoral strategy should be avoided. That argument, in this case, leads to the conclusion that these abortion amendments, like the fight for civil and gay rights in past years, were a bad idea that should never have been attempted. That is simply absurd.