Reproductive freedom was already giving Democrats a much-needed election boost even before President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential contest. Two years on from the Supreme Court’s momentous 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats across the country have seized on Republicans’ unpopular war on women’s and reproductive rights to build a powerful new electoral coalition—and it’s already reshaping the political landscape.
Of course, Republicans continue to deny abortion is a major issue. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” Sen. Lindsey Graham declared, “We’ll continue to have this discussion, but we’re not going to win or lose based on abortion. We’re going to win or lose based on, can we change the policy trajectory of this country?”
But the numbers tell another story.
Earlier this year, Marilyn Lands, a progressive Alabama Democrat who ran a campaign centered on reproductive justice, easily beat incumbent Republican State Representative Teddy Powell, flipping a deep-red legislative district in the process. In May, New York Democrats Tom Suozzi and Pat Ryan claimed two congressional seats for Democrats in large part by focusing on fears over abortion access restrictions.
And ballot measures protecting abortion rights have won in every single state where they’ve received a vote. That’s a historically unmatched record of success.
Millions of Americans already view the 2024 election as a referendum on ending the Republican Party’s extreme anti-abortion agenda. Now they have Kamala Harris, Democrats’ most-trusted abortion messenger, leading the Democratic ticket. That’s a worst-case scenario for a GOP that’s spent much of this year desperately trying to keep their extreme abortion position out of the headlines. It couldn’t happen to more deserving people.
It’s important to understand just how historically toxic the GOP’s anti-abortion position is among the voters they’ll need to win over if they want to recapture the White House. A Gallup survey from June found that a record number of Americans now identify as pro-choice. More importantly, nearly a third (32%) of those surveyed said they would only vote for a pro-choice candidate—another record.
New polling from Civiqs for Daily Kos reinforces just how crucial abortion will be for wide swaths of voters. Of those surveyed, 61% told pollsters that abortion was either a high priority issue or their top issue—and those voters overwhelmingly blame Republicans for the current wave of anti-abortion legislation in the states.
Those trends aren’t restricted to Democratic voters, either. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in August found that over half of Republican women aged 18-49 now identify as pro-choice, and a staggering 79% of all Republican women said they supported laws protecting access to abortion in the case of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother was at risk. That represents a seismic shift in the Republican political landscape, and helps explain why Democrats have been outperforming at the polls among independents and Republicans every time a campaign focuses on protecting abortion access.
Put simply: Republicans can’t hold their majorities if their own party remains this divided on abortion. Unfortunately for the far-right, a growing number of critical swing states (and soon-to-be swing states) will have abortion initiatives on the ballot in November. If history is any indication, they will also prove decisive in energizing Democratic and pro-choice turnout.
Kari Lake
Nowhere will abortion prove more decisive than in a state critical to Democrats’ efforts to hold both the White House and the Senate. Last month, abortion activists in Arizona submitted more than twice the signatures required to place a reproductive rights initiative on the ballot. That initiative would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and limit future efforts to infringe on reproductive freedom. The ballot proposition also turns Arizona into a hotbed of abortion debates at a time when Arizona Republicans including Senate candidate Kari Lake have tied themselves in political knots after supporting an all-out abortion ban.
Arizona’s initiative is also likely to help downballot Democrats in more conservative-leaning swing districts. Democrats need to win just two seats in the state Senate and three in the state legislature to snatch partisan control away from Republicans. With support for abortion protections cutting across party lines and energizing critical independents, once downtrodden Democrats now suspect abortion could be the issue that puts them over the top.
Reproductive freedom is also causing Republicans big headaches in Missouri, where another effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution is energizing voters and narrowing the gap between Democratic Senate hopeful Lucas Kunce and his opponent, Jan. 6 cheerleader Josh Hawley.
Since March, Kunce has reduced Hawley’s considerable 14-point lead to just 9 points, all gains that came before Missourians knew abortion would also be on the ballot. When neighboring Kansas faced the same question in 2022, a surge of first-time voters stunned the nation by voting in huge numbers to protect abortion statewide. Meanwhile, Hawley is once again running scared. After years of positioning himself as an anti-abortion crusader, Hawley’s team quietly removed multiple references to the senator’s pro-life record from his campaign website. It will be harder than that to hide Hawley’s unhinged statements comparing abortion and slavery.
Some Republicans, like Sen. JD Vance, don’t even think abortion is a “normal” thing to worry about:
Republicans now find themselves caught in a trap of their own creation. By trying to avoid discussing abortionn or brushing aside its importance (and inflaming the anger of independent voters), they’ve also drawn fire from the anti-abortion Republican base. Those voters see the GOP’s mad dash away from the abortion culture war as a sign of weakness and respond with sharply lower enthusiasm.
Candidates like Hawley, Lake, and even Donald Trump and Graham are now forced to ask which arm they’d like to cut off, knowing that either decision will likely prove fatal to their hopes of cobbling together a winning electoral coalition. Republicans’ generational dream of overturning Roe v. Wade and seizing control of America’s abortion debate finally came true. It’s quickly becoming a majority-ending nightmare.
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Of course, Republicans continue to deny abortion is a major issue. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” Sen. Lindsey Graham declared, “We’ll continue to have this discussion, but we’re not going to win or lose based on abortion. We’re going to win or lose based on, can we change the policy trajectory of this country?”
But the numbers tell another story.
Earlier this year, Marilyn Lands, a progressive Alabama Democrat who ran a campaign centered on reproductive justice, easily beat incumbent Republican State Representative Teddy Powell, flipping a deep-red legislative district in the process. In May, New York Democrats Tom Suozzi and Pat Ryan claimed two congressional seats for Democrats in large part by focusing on fears over abortion access restrictions.
And ballot measures protecting abortion rights have won in every single state where they’ve received a vote. That’s a historically unmatched record of success.
Millions of Americans already view the 2024 election as a referendum on ending the Republican Party’s extreme anti-abortion agenda. Now they have Kamala Harris, Democrats’ most-trusted abortion messenger, leading the Democratic ticket. That’s a worst-case scenario for a GOP that’s spent much of this year desperately trying to keep their extreme abortion position out of the headlines. It couldn’t happen to more deserving people.
It’s important to understand just how historically toxic the GOP’s anti-abortion position is among the voters they’ll need to win over if they want to recapture the White House. A Gallup survey from June found that a record number of Americans now identify as pro-choice. More importantly, nearly a third (32%) of those surveyed said they would only vote for a pro-choice candidate—another record.
New polling from Civiqs for Daily Kos reinforces just how crucial abortion will be for wide swaths of voters. Of those surveyed, 61% told pollsters that abortion was either a high priority issue or their top issue—and those voters overwhelmingly blame Republicans for the current wave of anti-abortion legislation in the states.
Those trends aren’t restricted to Democratic voters, either. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in August found that over half of Republican women aged 18-49 now identify as pro-choice, and a staggering 79% of all Republican women said they supported laws protecting access to abortion in the case of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother was at risk. That represents a seismic shift in the Republican political landscape, and helps explain why Democrats have been outperforming at the polls among independents and Republicans every time a campaign focuses on protecting abortion access.
Put simply: Republicans can’t hold their majorities if their own party remains this divided on abortion. Unfortunately for the far-right, a growing number of critical swing states (and soon-to-be swing states) will have abortion initiatives on the ballot in November. If history is any indication, they will also prove decisive in energizing Democratic and pro-choice turnout.
Kari Lake
Nowhere will abortion prove more decisive than in a state critical to Democrats’ efforts to hold both the White House and the Senate. Last month, abortion activists in Arizona submitted more than twice the signatures required to place a reproductive rights initiative on the ballot. That initiative would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and limit future efforts to infringe on reproductive freedom. The ballot proposition also turns Arizona into a hotbed of abortion debates at a time when Arizona Republicans including Senate candidate Kari Lake have tied themselves in political knots after supporting an all-out abortion ban.
Arizona’s initiative is also likely to help downballot Democrats in more conservative-leaning swing districts. Democrats need to win just two seats in the state Senate and three in the state legislature to snatch partisan control away from Republicans. With support for abortion protections cutting across party lines and energizing critical independents, once downtrodden Democrats now suspect abortion could be the issue that puts them over the top.
Reproductive freedom is also causing Republicans big headaches in Missouri, where another effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution is energizing voters and narrowing the gap between Democratic Senate hopeful Lucas Kunce and his opponent, Jan. 6 cheerleader Josh Hawley.
Since March, Kunce has reduced Hawley’s considerable 14-point lead to just 9 points, all gains that came before Missourians knew abortion would also be on the ballot. When neighboring Kansas faced the same question in 2022, a surge of first-time voters stunned the nation by voting in huge numbers to protect abortion statewide. Meanwhile, Hawley is once again running scared. After years of positioning himself as an anti-abortion crusader, Hawley’s team quietly removed multiple references to the senator’s pro-life record from his campaign website. It will be harder than that to hide Hawley’s unhinged statements comparing abortion and slavery.
Some Republicans, like Sen. JD Vance, don’t even think abortion is a “normal” thing to worry about:
Republicans now find themselves caught in a trap of their own creation. By trying to avoid discussing abortionn or brushing aside its importance (and inflaming the anger of independent voters), they’ve also drawn fire from the anti-abortion Republican base. Those voters see the GOP’s mad dash away from the abortion culture war as a sign of weakness and respond with sharply lower enthusiasm.
Candidates like Hawley, Lake, and even Donald Trump and Graham are now forced to ask which arm they’d like to cut off, knowing that either decision will likely prove fatal to their hopes of cobbling together a winning electoral coalition. Republicans’ generational dream of overturning Roe v. Wade and seizing control of America’s abortion debate finally came true. It’s quickly becoming a majority-ending nightmare.
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