There was every reason to expect a close election.
Instead, Tuesday’s resounding victory for abortion rights advocates in Kansas provided some of the most concrete evidence yet that the Supreme Court’s decision to undo Roe v. Wade has changed the political landscape. The victory, by a margin of 59-41 in a Republican stronghold, suggests the Democrats will be the energetic party on an issue where Republicans usually had an enthusiasm advantage.
The Kansas vote means about 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject a similar initiative to roll back abortion rights, including in more than 40 of the 50 states (a few states on each side are very close to 50). -50). This is a rough estimate, based on how demographic characteristics predicted the results of recent abortion referendums. But it’s an evidence-based way to come to a pretty obvious conclusion: If abortion rights get 59 percent support in Kansas, it’s doing even better than that nationwide.
It’s a figure that’s in line with recent national surveys that showed increased support for legal abortion following the court’s decision. And the high turnout, especially among Democrats, confirms that abortion is not just a matter of a wedge of interest to political activists. The stakes of abortion policy have become so high that it can only ensure high turnout in the medium term.
None of this proves that the issue will help Democrats in the midterm elections. And there are limits to what can be inferred from the Kansas data. But the skewed margin makes one thing clear: the political wind is now at the back of abortion rights advocates.
A surprisingly decisive outcome
There weren’t many public polls leading up to the Kansas election, but the best available data suggested voters would likely be fairly evenly split on abortion.
In a Times compilation of national polls published this spring, 48 percent of Kansas voters said they thought abortion should be largely legal, compared with 47 percent who thought it should be largely illegal. Similarly, the Cooperative Election Study in 2020 found that the state registered voters were evenly split on whether abortion should be legal.
The results of similar recent referendums in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia also pointed to a close race in Kansas — perhaps even one in which a “no” vote to preserve abortion rights would have an advantage.
As with the Kansas vote, a “yes” vote in any of those four states’ initiatives would have amended a state constitution to allow for significant restrictions on abortion rights or funding for abortion. Unlike Kansas, the initiatives passed in all four states, including a 24-point victory in Louisiana in 2020. But support for abortion rights surpassed support for Democratic presidential candidates in relatively white areas in all four states, especially in less religious ones. areas beyond. the deep south.
It’s a pattern that suggests abortion rights would receive much more support than Joe Biden did as a candidate in a relatively white state like Kansas—perhaps even enough to favor abortion rights for survival.
It may seem surprising that abortion advocates would even have a chance in Kansas, given the state’s long tradition of voting for Republicans. But Kansas is more reliable Republican than conservative. The state has an above-average number of college graduates, a group that has moved toward Democrats in recent years.
Kansas voted Donald J. Trump by about 15 percentage points in 2020, enough to make it pretty safe Republican. Still, it’s not quite off the board for Democrats. Republicans learned this the hard way; look no further than the 2018 Democratic win in the governor’s race.
Still, a landslide victory for abortion rights in Kansas didn’t seem a likely outcome, based on polls as well as recent initiatives. The most likely explanation for the surprise: Voters may be more in favor of abortion rights in the wake of Roe’s overthrow (as national polls imply); they may be more cautious about abolishing abortion rights now that these initiatives have real policy implications; abortion rights advocates may have more energy to go to the polls.
Abortion rights advocates may not always find it so easy to advance their cause. They defended the status quo in Kansas; elsewhere they will try to lift abortion bans.
Whatever the explanation, if abortion advocates did as well as they did in Kansas, they would stand a good chance of defending abortion rights almost anywhere in the country. The state may not be as conservative as Alabama, but it’s far more conservative than the nation as a whole — and the result wasn’t close to. There are only seven states — in the Deep South and the Mountain West — where abortion rights supporters would be expected to fail in a hypothetically similar initiative.
A shift on the rise
If there’s any rule about partisan turnout in American politics, it’s that registered Republicans outrank registered Democrats.
While the numbers in Kansas are still preliminary, it appears that registered Democrats were more likely to vote than registered Republicans.
A total of 276,000 voters took part in the Democratic primary, also held on Tuesday, compared to 451,000 who voted in the Republican primary. The Democratic count was 56 percent of the number of registered Democrats in the state, while the number of Republican primary voters was 53 percent of the number of registered Republicans. (Unaffiliated voters are the second largest group in Kansas.)
In Johnson County, outside of Kansas City, Mo., 67 percent of registered Democrats showed up, compared to 60 percent of registered Republicans.
This is a rare achievement for Democrats in high-turnout elections. In nearby Iowa, where historical turnout data is easily accessible, the turnout among registered Democrats in general elections has never been greater in at least 40 years than the turnout among registered Republicans.
The superior Democratic turnout helps explain why the outcome for abortion opponents was less favorable than expected. And it confirms that Democrats now have much more energy on the abortion issue, reversing a pattern from the recent election. It may even spark Democrats’ hopes that they can defy the president’s party’s long-standing tendency to have low turnout in midterm elections.
For Republicans, the turnout figures may offer a modest silver lining. They could reasonably hope that turnout will be more favorable in the midterm elections in November, when abortion will not be the only topic of the vote and Republicans will have many more reasons to vote — including control of Congress.