Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP
Voters wait outside a polling place in August in Kansas, which soundly rejected an initiative that would have facilitated an abortion ban.
This article appears in the October 2022 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
The day after the May leak of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs case, which would soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Rep. Antonio Delgado announced he would leave his position representing New York’s 19th Congressional District to become the state’s lieutenant governor. The race to replace Delgado, an August special election, began as the decision in Dobbs was formally released, with Democrat Pat Ryan running on abortion explicitly. Early voting began just after voters in Kansas overwhelmingly defeated an attempt to change the state constitution to pave the way for a ban of their own. “The whole campaign paralleled that,” Ryan told me.
By the time Election Day came around, the campaign had drawn national attention as an abortion bellwether. New York’s 19th is a true swing district, having gone Obama/Trump/Biden in successive election cycles. It’s the sort of district that the president’s party, at least historically, would expect to lose ahead of the midterms. Add to that a substantial fundraising advantage for Republican Marc Molinaro, a historically unpopular president, and even Democratic polling showing a comfortable lead for the Republican, and the result looked certain.
But Ryan won the special election in the 19th by more than two percentage points, thanks in part to an unexpected turnout surge. On the heels of the Kansas abortion referendum just three weeks prior—which produced the highest-turnout primary election in state history—came proof to election watchers that abortion politics could save congressional Democrats from a crushing defeat come November. “It’s time to adjust your expectations for November,” decreed Politico Playbook in the wake of Ryan’s win. “Democrats have now outperformed Biden’s numbers in each of the four U.S. House special elections since the Dobbs decision in June,” according to Inside Elections’ Ryan Matsumoto. That was just one in a torrent of such proclamations, which came in everything from data publications like FiveThirtyEight to editorials like New York magazine.
In a fractious Democratic party, whose politicians, strategists, consultants, and fundraisers have been at loggerheads for almost the entirety of the Biden presidency, the fate-making impact of the Dobbs decision has become something akin to common sense. Voter registration numbers are up with women, especially in red states. Even polling in The Wall Street Journal has found that abortion has become markedly more popular nationwide since March, and that voters claimed that the Court’s decision was the most likely reason for them to vote in November. Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans support total abortion bans.
Democrats are taking advantage of the opportunity, too, centralizing their messaging on abortion in a number of races. Incumbents in tough races who once thought their road to re-election came through punching the left, like Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, are now attacking opponents for supporting abortion bans. This has put Republican candidates on the defensive, scrubbing their websites and backpedaling on public statements.
If having abortion on the ballot only implicitly has driven turnout and delivered multiple percentage points of advantage to congressional Democrats in special elections, it would stand to reason that getting explicit abortion referenda on the ballot in November would be even more powerful in reversing the typical trend of the party with the presidency losing seats in a midterm. In fact, there are a number of abortion measures planned for statewide ballot placement in November, and most of them are being put there by liberals. In California, Vermont, Michigan, Montana, and Kentucky, there are going to be ballot measures weighing in, one way or another, on abortion.
While taking a firm stance on abortion rights has been a winning strategy, the willingness to fight, period, is what voters may be responding to.
In some cases, those measures are being taken up for reasons that are not wholly unrelated to Democratic aspirations for holding the House majority. In California, with its Democratic supermajority, abortion is absolutely not under threat of a statewide ban. The proposal, which would enshrine the right in the constitution, is arguably made redundant by pre-existing privacy protections already in place. But there are approximately seven suburban and exurban swing congressional seats in the Golden State, where an abortion rights measure may pull liberal abortion rights supporters to the ballot box. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions also factor in.
In Michigan, meanwhile, a judge recently overturned the state’s 1931 abortion ban, also making redundant its own initiative. Still, abortion advocates gathered a record number of signatures, more than double the requirement, to ensure the referendum’s place on the ballot. The state’s Republicans on the Board of State Canvassers fought hard to keep the measure from getting on the ballot anyway, knowing that an unpopular policy will not win popular support. They also know that incumbent Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will benefit from an abortion initiative on the ballot, as she seeks re-election against an anti-abortion opponent.
Vermont is quite blue, and already sports a state law on the books codifying abortion rights, but the state also has its own referendum. Its open Senate seat replacing the retiring Patrick Leahy isn’t really in danger of a flip to the Republicans, but having an abortion measure drawing out voters doesn’t hurt.
After the resounding Kansas defeat, red states have few of these campaigns in the works; a Kentucky constitutional amendment backed by anti-abortion forces hopes to supersede a judge’s ruling that froze the state’s trigger law, and a Montana measure would mandate medical care for babies “born alive.” But by and large, Republicans aren’t rushing to capitalize on the Dobbs ruling. And it’s not a bug that the abortion referenda are supposed to help Democrats up the ballot.
But there’s plenty of reason to believe this won’t work as resoundingly as some hope. In recent years, there have been a number of highly popular ballot measures relating to policies embraced by Democrats that have done nothing for Democratic politicians. In places like Florida, Missouri, and Oklahoma, we have seen things like a $15 minimum wage and Medicaid expansion triumph without a single congressional Democrat on the ticket reaping the benefit; we’ve also seen right-to-work laws downed without lifting any Democratic congressional boats.
As Zachary Donnini noted in Decision Desk HQ, the timing of Dobbs has made it an easier answer to a complex political quandary. Multiple issues converged around the time that Democrats started faring better in special elections. “Given that economic issues consistently outpoll social issues in importance to American voters, it is also notable that inflation has finally begun to decline and Democrats passed a reconciliation bill including popular provisions such as lowering prescription drug costs and raising taxes on large corporations,” Donnini wrote.
The Dobbs decision looks (and maybe is) consequential, but it would be foolish to overlook the fact that it also coincided with gas prices finally beginning to turn, inflation abating, and the Biden administration at long last striking a combative pose toward Republicans and large corporations, using executive power to overcome congressional obstructionism, and passing popular, party-line legislation that abandoned the fetish of bipartisanship.
The polling firm Data for Progress’s generic ballot saw the Republican advantage dwindle to just one point in late August, a two-point drop from late July. That period included zero movement on abortion (Dobbs dropped in June), but did feature the Democrats’ partisan climate, drug pricing, and taxation legislation as well as the student debt cancellation order.
Even Congressman Ryan headed me off at some point in our discussion about the strategic merits of running on abortion. “I’m not sure if you want to go here, but the other and equal thing, in terms of what I talked about on the trail, was a strong position against corporate monopolies,” he told me. “Here in Ulster County we had a utility company ripping people off, and speaking to their economic pain was huge. That was equally if not more resonant knocking on doors.” The campaign’s largest paid media spend came on an ad denigrating that utility company for its monopolistic practices, and touting Ryan’s record taking them on.
It’s definitely true that the large and sudden increase in voter registration among women coinciding with the Dobbs ruling, and the marked shifts in polling on attitudes toward abortion and its importance in voter decisions, cannot be ignored. In that sense, the midterms could look like 1992, the “Year of the Woman,” when the high-profile Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings galvanized women to run for office and win in record numbers with high turnout, especially among young people. The midterms of 1998, where voters delivered a backlash to Republican obsessions with the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky sideshow, with Democrats gaining seats in the House, could serve as another model.
But while taking a firm stance on abortion rights, something that Democrats had been wary to do even in the days and weeks after Dobbs, has thus far been a critical and winning strategy, the willingness to take a firm stance and fight, period, is what voters may be responding to, especially after a 16-month stretch where the Biden administration did little of it. By the same token, if gas prices kick back up in the fall or inflation reignites, and Democrats get wiped out as previously expected, it won’t be the fault of having been too strong on fighting for abortion rights, or anything else for that matter.
“What we stood for is critical, but the willingness to stand up and fight clearly, strongly; that was the most important thing,” Ryan told me. “That’s what made the difference for us.”
