Many Democrats have come to believe that abortion access is the solution to their political problems. This week’s election results — with Ohio guaranteeing abortion access in a landslide and Democrats winning in both Virginia and Kentucky — support this notion.
But I continue to think that recent elections offer a more complex picture, and I want to use today’s newsletter to explain. I know that some readers are skeptical.
Widespread abortion access is clearly popular, even in many red states. When Americans have voted directly on the issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, abortion rights have gone seven for seven. What’s less clear is how much abortion politics affect general elections between a Democrat and a Republican. Is the effect large — or usually only enough to tip very close races?
Ohio, the center of the abortion fight in this year’s election, offers a useful case study.
‘It is the issue’
A year ago, the Democratic Party set out to turn Ohio blue by emphasizing the Republican Party’s opposition to abortion.
Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate nominee, protested outside the Supreme Court the day it eliminated the constitutional right to abortion access. “J.D. Vance wants a national abortion ban,” Ryan said about his Republican opponent later in the campaign. “I think we go back to Roe v. Wade.”
In the Ohio governor’s race, Nan Whaley, the Democratic nominee, went further than Ryan and organized her campaign around the topic, as Jessie Balmert of The Columbus Dispatch reported. “It is the only thing we’re really talking about,” Whaley said three weeks before Election Day. “We think it is the issue.”
None of this worked. Ryan lost to Vance by six percentage points. Whaley lost to Gov. Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent who had signed abortion restrictions, by 25 points.
These failures were part of a pattern. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke focused on abortion in his campaign for governor last year. So did…
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