Election Analysis

What worked, what didn't, and what the GOP is going to do now

This is a special addition/edition to the 11.9.23 issue of Abortion, Every Day.

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I don’t know about you, but I’m still feeling delighted about Tuesday night and the absolute ass-kicking voters gave Republicans over abortion rights. If you had any question as to how I feel, I think the headline of my column yesterday says it all:

Fuck You, We Win

Ohio voters protected abortion rights by a big margin—an especially impressive win given the incessant attacks on democracy and the multimillion dollar disinformation campaign launched by anti-abortion groups. If you missed some of the celebratory images and speeches, you can watch some here at The New York Times, and The Guardian has clips below. (Did they make me cry? Absolutely.)

Lauren Blauvelt, co-chair of the Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights and executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said, “Today, Ohioans made it clear, abortion is a winning issue, and together we can do anything.” U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown said that the success was proof that voter want to “protect the right to make their own health care decisions without interference from the government or fear of being criminalized.” (You can watch her on CNN here.) And for some more responses from politicians and activists on Ohio’s abortion rights win, click here.

The biggest takeaway from Ohio, of course, is that abortion wins elections. In fact, abortion rights have won every single time they’ve been put directly to voters since Roe was overturned. Ohio marks the seventh state where abortion was on the ballot and won—Ms. magazine has a list of the previous measures here.

What does this mean moving forward? That we’re going to see a lot more ballot measures in other states. (More on this in the daily report tonight.)

But even when abortion isn’t directly being voted on, reproductive rights bring home election wins. We saw it happen this week not only in Ohio, but in Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania, where the state Supreme Court race became a referendum on abortion rights, it wasn’t just Democrats who wanted to protect reproductive health. Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, told the Pennsylvania Capital Star, “both Democrats and Republican women have abortions.”

“And I think the realization is, ‘Oh my goodness, I might need an abortion. My daughter might need an abortion and I can no longer just count on Democrats to protect my reproductive rights.’” 

In the same article, Reproductive Freedom for All Vice President Ryan Stitzlein says that Republicans across the country are starting to see “just how toxic their position of abortion is with voters.”

I mean, I should hope so: Abortion rights lost them a Kentucky election for goodness’ sake! That’s a big fucking deal.

But despite Republicans’ growing realization that abortion rights are trouncing them at the polls, they were still somehow holding out hope for Tuesday night. Axios points out, for example, that Republicans’ losses in Virginia were a big blow.

The Virginia GOP and the anti-abortion movement really believed that painting their 15-week abortion ban as a compromise—and claiming that it wasn’t a ban at all—would be the middle ground voters are looking for. But here’s the thing: voters aren’t looking for a middle ground! As I’ve pointed out again and again, there is no ‘compromise’ on our bodies and freedom:

Abortion’s Dead Center

It’s not just feminists who believe as much! Voters are increasingly pro-choice, even when it comes to abortion throughout pregnancy. Republicans don’t seem to understand that yet. They keep relying on biased polls from anti-abortion groups that tell them what they want to hear, rather than looking at the reality of what this country wants.

Democrats, on the other hand, finally seem to get it. (Though as I’ve said before, I just wish it didn’t take the end of Roe to make them realize that abortion is a winning issue.) The New York Times reports that Democrats spent more than $74 million on ads about abortion rights in 2023 across the country; Republicans spent just $16 million. And I think it’s safe to say that Democrats’ focus on abortion isn’t going anywhere.

The GOP’s messaging, however, fell very, very flat. Not just because of how unpopular abortion bans are—but because of how their talking points treat voters. Republicans’ claims that bans aren’t really bans for example, relied on the idea that Americans are stupid. I’m willing to bet that voters found this insulting—it came across as trickery because it was trickery.

The same is true for their efforts to call certain types of bans ‘compromises’: A poll from Reproductive Freedom for All found that Americans reject the notion that 15-week bans are ‘reasonable compromises’ by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Voters don’t like to be lied to and they don’t like to be tricked.

Over at Bloomberg, columnist Jonathan Bernstein pointed out something else important about Republicans’ broader (losing) tactic:

“[The] whole constellation of ‘anti-woke’ measures and themes Republicans have been running on over the last couple of years, including attacks on trans people, have been total flops as far as winning elections is concerned. Again, it’s hard to be certain of exactly what does and doesn’t drive votes, but Republican failures do make it clear that those issues are certainly not overwhelmingly successful for them.”

Anti-trans bigotry lost, book banning lost, their ‘anti-woke’ bullshit lost. Even Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy knows that they’re the “party of losers.”

Republican & Anti-Abortion Response

Speaking of losers, it’s been fun to watch the anti-abortion movement react to their overwhelming losses this week. (Hey, I’ve never claimed to be a gracious person.) But how they’re responding is incredibly telling. Specifically, the way that they’re focusing on the idea that they were up against the “abortion industry.”

In a press release, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser said, “We must persevere in working to undo the abortion industry’s 50-year political monopoly.” The statement also claimed that “Big Abortion will continue to spend millions to attack and roll back the consensus of the people…” (Please note that word, ‘consensus’!) In an email to supporters, Students for Life also called out the “abortion industry,” characterizing the fight ahead as a marathon rather than a sprint.

The short version? Anti-abortion activists are desperate to make it out as if they’re up against some big, bad industry of baby-killers rather than the truth: they’re up against American women. The anti-abortion movement doesn’t want people to know that their enemy is simply…women.

That really is the heart of the movement’s problem. They’re up against individual people who want their rights and healthcare—and when they don’t get it, the stories of those individual people are devastating.

Kellyanne Conway, pollster and adviser to SBA Pro-Life America, admitted as much to the New York Times, noting that Democrats have “first-person testimonials that shock the conscience.” And Barrett Marson, a Republican political adviser in Arizona, told the NYT, “This is such a personal issue, that it is easy to pull at the heartstrings of your everyday, average, low-information voter.”

Perhaps one does not need a lot of information to know that the post-Roe horror stories are very, very bad? And that it’s not fun to vote for people who call you “low-information”?

I’ll have more on the election later tonight in the daily report, but I hope everyone is taking this moment to bask in our wins (and their losses).