Democrats saw major victories on the issue in the 2022 midterms and Virginia’s off-year elections in 2023, but the party largely underperformed up and down the ballot on the issue with key groups on election night Tuesday, our colleagues Caroline Vakil and Julia Manchester report.
According to exit polling compiled by the AP and KFF, about a quarter of voters said abortion was the "single most important" factor in their vote, roughly 4 in 10 said it had a major impact on their decision to turn out and more than half said it had a major impact on which candidates they supported.
Still, the analysis concluded that “Vice President Harris's strong advantage on abortion was not enough to override negative views of the economy and immigration, issues where President- Elect Donald Trump held the edge.”
At the same time, reproductive rights were broadly popular at the state level Tuesday night, as 7 out of 10 states passed ballot measures aimed at preserving, expanding or restoring the right to an abortion—the broadest push for abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The measures won despite strong institutional opposition from anti-abortion advocacy groups, GOP politicians, judges and others who tried to stop the measures from even getting on the ballot in the first place.
The amendment victories show competing election priorities.
Voters largely approved of local abortion protections, but voters in some of the same states voted for openly anti-abortion GOP senators. Voters in Arizona, Missouri and Montana voted for Trump, who appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, but still largely supported abortion rights.
“First, last night showed that preserving abortion rights is still a potent message for a majority of voters, even in red states that Trump carried easily. But in places where it didn’t translate to wins at the top of the ticket, it could be that voters saw it in isolation– not as an economic issue as well as a rights issue,” Democratic strategist Christy Setzer explained in a Wednesday email.
