How Ohio's ballot vote could preview the 2024 politics of abortion | CNN Politics
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Supporters and opponents of a GOP-backed measure that would make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution packed the statehouse rotunda on May 10, 2023, in Columbus. Samantha Hendrickson/AP/FILE CNN —
The ballot initiative Ohio voters will decide Tuesday is likely to demonstrate again the continuing public resistance to last year's Supreme Court decision ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion - while also offering an early indication about how broadly that backlash may benefit Democrats in the 2024 election.
Ohio voters are facing a measure placed on the ballot by state Republicans that would require future initiatives to change the state Constitution to receive 60% of the vote to be approved. The change would apply to amendments on all subjects, but the campaign has become a proxy test of attitudes about abortion in the state. Almost everyone agrees Republicans and their allies in the anti-abortion movement have advanced this proposal to end majority rule on ballot initiatives because they fear that a majority of Ohio voters will support a separate ballot initiative in November to overturn the six-week abortion ban approved by the GOP-controlled state legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
Abortion rights advocates are feeling confident about winning both today's vote and the follow-on election in November to restore abortion rights in the state. "If I were on the ground in Ohio, I'd be feeling very good about the work I was doing," said Angela Vasquez-Giroux vice president of communications and research at NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights group.
If Ohio voters on Tuesday reject the measure, known as Issue 1, to require super-majorities for future initiatives, it would underscore the broad public support for maintaining legal access to abortion, even in most states that now lean strongly toward Republicans. A massive 2022 polling project by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute found that a majority of voters in 43 states said they believe abortion should remain legal in all or most circumstances.
Those attitudes have translated into results at the ballot box. Since the Republican-appointed US Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, abortion rights supporters have triumphed each time voters have had the opportunity in a ballot initiative to directly decide whether abortion should remain legal in their state. That pattern has extended through red states (including Kansas, Kentucky and Montana) and blue (such as California and Vermont). Another victory on Tuesday in Ohio, a state former President Donald Trump won comfortably in both 2016 and 2020, will encourage advocates to press ballot initiatives restoring abortion rights next year in other traditionally Republican-leaning states where GOP governors and legislators have restricted or banned the procedure, including Florida, South Dakota, Missouri and possibly Arizona.
But while an Ohio victory may generate momentum for abortion rights advocates, it could also demonstrate the big political challenge still confronting them. While the abortion rights' side has consistently won ballot initiatives, the issue's impact on electoral campaigns has been much more uneven.
In 2022, promises to defend abortion rights proved a powerful weapon for Democratic candidates in Democratic-leaning and swing states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - places where abortion primarily remains legal. But in more red-leaning states, such as Florida, Texas, Iowa and Ohio itself, Democrats in 2022 were unable to generate any meaningful backlash against Republican state officials who imposed severe abortion bans-even though polls, including both the PRRI project and local surveys, showed most voters in those places supported maintaining legal abortion. That was especially true in Ohio, where DeWine cruised to a landslide reelection after signing the restrictive abortion ban that voters appear poised to repeal this year.
"Ballot measures can win in very hard places that Democrats will struggle to win because it's just an up or down [vote] on where you are about abortion," said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster. But, she added, "in red states voters may use other issues" such as crime or immigration "more heavily than abortion" in deciding which candidate shares their values most.
Ohio will present a critical test of whether Democrats in 2024 can more effectively convert support for abortion rights into votes against red state Republicans who oppose those rights. It is one of the three states most likely to determine which party controls the next Senate. Democratic senators in those three states - Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia - are the last three Democrats holding any of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that voted for Trump in 2020. All three of those seats will be on the ballot next November. "What's really going to be important for folks in these Senate races is to underscore for voters, your rights are important to me, I'm here to protect and restore your rights," said Vasquez-Giroux. "We need candidates to be out front."
In a conference call with Democratic activists earlier this month, Brown portrayed Tuesday's vote as the start of a chain reaction that could help him defy the state's rightward drift. "If we get our people to the polls, we win this overwhelmingly," Brown said about Issue 1. "That will give us momentum for the November vote on protecting women's rights, and it will give us momentum then for our elections next year."
That could happen. But it would require Brown and abortion-rights advocates to break the pattern from 2022, when the issue, somewhat paradoxically, benefited Democrats more in places where the procedure remained legal than in places where it was banned.
On a national basis, support for abortion rights clearly helped Democrats hold down their losses in the House of Representatives: more than three-fifths of voters said they supported legal abortion and almost three-fourths of them backed Democratic candidates for the House, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN. And, the exit polls found, in most key swing states abortion likewise benefited Democrats running in gubernatorial and US Senate races against Republicans who opposed abortion rights.
A remarkably similar 62% to 63% of voters supported legal abortion in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, the exit polls found, and Democrats won the governorships in all four - carrying over four-fifths of those pro-choice voters in the first two states and almost exactly three-fourths of them in the latter two. Huge margins among voters who supported abortion rights also keyed Democratic Senate wins last year in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona and Nevada. And abortion rights was the critical issue that powered a landslide Democratic victory in a Wisconsin state Supreme Court election last spring.
But in more solidly Republican-leaning states, Democrats faced, as I wrote last November, a "double whammy." While most voters in those states also supported abortion rights, the majorities recorded in the exit polls were in the range of 53% to 58%, narrower than in the purple (much less blue) states. As important, compared to the swing states, Republican candidates in the red states frequently won a higher percentage of voters who said they supported abortion rights. In Florida, for instance, both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio carried almost exactly one-third of voters who backed legal abortion, the exit polls found; in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp, who signed a six-week abortion ban, carried nearly 3 in 10 voters who supported legal abortion, and strikingly won nearly three-fourths of all White women. Apart from Arizona, which has been trending away from the GOP, Democrats didn't flip the governor's seat in any state that restricted or banned abortion; Democrats didn't dislodge a GOP state legislative majority in any state that retrenched abortion rights.
Jim Henson, executive director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, said in that state Republicans were able to overcome majority public opposition to their sweeping abortion ban mostly by convincing voters to focus more on other issues. That success reflected both Democratic weakness and Republican strength. In Texas, as in other red states, Henson notes, the Democratic party is too weak to shape what issues define the public debate. "You lose influence over the public discussion," Henson said. Rather than abortion, which split even their supporters, Texas Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott were able to keep voters in their coalition focused on the issues where they agree with the party, particularly border security. "It's about agenda management and the salience of issues," Henson said.
In Ohio, a six-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest signed by DeWine in 2019 went into effect after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe last summer. The policy immediately generated enormous controversy when a 10-year-old rape victim had to travel to neighboring Indiana to obtain an abortion. But the issue proved barely a speed bump for Ohio Republicans in the November election, even though the exit poll found 58% of voters there wanted abortion to remain mostly legal (and the PRRI survey put support for legal abortion even higher).
Republicans in the state legislature were insulated from any backlash by a severe partisan gerrymander. DeWine scored a landslide reelection victory, and Republican J.D. Vance notched a solid win over Democrat Tim Ryan in the US Senate race. Exit polls found that nearly one-third of voters who supported legal abortion backed Vance, and that DeWine carried 43% of voters who favored abortion rights - much more than any other Republican governor in the states where exit polls were conducted.
Operatives in both parties cite multiple reasons why opposition to the abortion ban didn't hurt Ohio Republicans more. One reason is that the law's impact was muffled when a state court blocked implementation of it before the election. In the Senate race, another factor was that Ryan, in his intent focus on recapturing blue-collar White workers, downplayed the issue. And DeWine benefited not only from a massive funding advantage over his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, but also from good grades for his handling of the pandemic among many of the college-educated voters most dubious of abortion bans.
Jeff Rusnak, a long-time Ohio-based Democratic consultant, says that while abortion mostly fizzled in the statewide contests, it was an effective issue for Democrats in several of their surprising Ohio congressional wins last year. And he echoes many Democrats there who believe that support for legal abortion could prove a more powerful asset for Brown next year.
A key reason for the Democrats' decline in Ohio, Rusnak noted, is that they haven't matched the party's performance with female voters in other states across the region, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. But increased focus on abortion, he maintains, could reverse that. "This is the kind of issue that touches everybody," he said. "There are large numbers of people who feel very strongly about this, whether you are in an urban, suburban or rural area of this state. They don't want government interfering, they don't want government making these decisions for them."
The abortion-related ballot initiative votes on Tuesday and in November will keep the issue front and center for voters. And if Ohio votes to restore abortion rights in November, that could make voters there particularly sensitive to the risk that Republicans might override that decision by passing a nationwide abortion ban if they win unified control of Congress and the White House next year. (Conversely, a Republican victory on either Issue 1 or the November ballot measure about abortion would signal that receptivity to GOP arguments has reached a level in Ohio that will be extremely difficult for Brown to surmount.)
Both of the leading GOP contenders to oppose Brown have taken strongly anti-abortion positions, with Secretary of State Frank LaRose, probably the slight front-runner for the nomination, positioning himself as the leading advocate of Issue 1 and a staunch backer of the state's six-week abortion ban. LaRose's main rival, the Trump-allied business owner Bernie Moreno, has described himself as "100 percent pro-life with no exceptions."
LaRose recently frustrated other Republicans when he directly linked Tuesday's vote to the abortion ban. Republicans have focused their campaign for Issue 1 on the argument that the current rules will allow out of state interests to flood the state with money and engrave a wide-ranging wish list of liberal priorities into the Ohio Constitution. (Ads supporting the initiative have referenced drag shows, gender-affirming care for transgender minors, and parental rights, hot button issues for GOP voters.) But at a May GOP dinner, LaRose was recorded saying: "Some people say this is all about abortion. Well, you know what? It's 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution."
David Pepper, the former Democratic state party chair, said on a podcast last week that while polling and early vote results are promising for opponents, a late turnout surge of culturally conservative GOP voters could still pass Issue 1. And anti-abortion groups are pushing hard on its behalf. "Issue 1…safeguards Ohio's constitution against outside groups pushing extreme amendments," said Sue Liebel, director of state affairs and Midwest regional director for SBA Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group, in a statement.
But the measure has drawn broad bipartisan opposition, including from multiple former Ohio Republican governors and attorneys general. One long-time GOP operative in the state closely following the debate told me he anticipates the state will reject Issue 1 and then approve the November measure to override the state's abortion ban, perhaps resoundingly in each case.
"I am as confident as I can be that it's going to pass in November, based on everything I've seen over and over again," said the GOP operative, who asked for anonymity while discussing the state of the contests. "The abortion law that was passed … was way out of kilter with what people think in Ohio."
Banning abortion appears equally "out of kilter" with majority public sentiment in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - all swing states where Democrats must defend Senate seats next year. And in all those places, Democratic Senate candidates are likely to stress the possibility that Republicans will seek a nationwide abortion ban if they win control of the chamber. Democratic polls have found that most voters expect the GOP to pursue such a national prohibition if it captures the majority. "Abortion is going to be one of the defining issues of the cycle," said David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Voters are as angry about the overturn of Roe and what it means to them today as when it happened."
But even if abortion helps Democrats hold all of those precarious seats, they would still likely lose their Senate majority unless they can win two of the three races in the more reliably Republican terrain of West Virginia, Montana and Ohio. Democrats can afford a net loss of only one Senate seat, even if they retain the White House next year, and with it the tie-breaking Senate vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
If Manchin seeks reelection, he's unlikely to stress the issue in West Virginia (he was the lone Senate Democrat last year to vote to uphold a Republican filibuster on a bill to restore the nationwide right to abortion). But abortion almost certainly will need to play a leading role if Brown in Ohio and Tester in Montana are to survive the Republican current in their state-particularly in a presidential election year. Control of the Senate may pivot on whether support for legal abortion proves decisive for more voters in red America next year than it did in 2022.
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A minority are looking to subvert the will of a majority
This should no longer merit any mention. Today's Republican Party is profoundly anti-democratic. It is working assiduously to replace popular democracy with a one-party dictatorship led by a Great Leader.
We should not react with surprise.
The base is profoundly rightwing populist. The Party is fighting amongst themselves for their identity. I don't know if they can save themselves or reform under a new banner, but eventually it will work itself out because as we are seeing populism isn't popular in a country so diverse and spread out as we are.
14 months is near eternity in the world of politics. the developing divide in the GOP will only get worse the closer we get to the next election. look for republicans in more contested districts to separate themselves from trump and anti-choice legislation in an attempt to save their seats.
A democrat (small "d") does not try to prevent others - those with different opinions - from voting. The entire Republican Party is doing just that.
How so in this case?
Bullshit
And I'm sure you can back up that claim.
Another brilliantly crafted argument!
Glad you liked it. It seemed quite appropriate in response to the comment put forth.
Don't hold your breath my friend.
No one has prevented me from voting, I'm sorry that they were able to stop you.
I know he can't back it up. They never can back up this claim. It's just more unfounded bullshit from the left.
George Conway said as much yesterday in an interview. We live in interesting times...
A No True Scottsman agreement won't work with me, Bob. No system is monolithic and that includes both parties. Left wing populist cancel culture can get pretty bad, but it's not indicative of the whole either.
You need to learn what "No True Scotsman" means.
pro-choice is individual liberty.
Not for the fetus.
they should complain and contribute to the group that lobbies for them...
Have not heard of a fetus complaining
Maybe your ear wasn't in the right spot.
don't think it can complain, that comes later
How do you know if you are out of earshot?
The fetus is not an individual/person.
20-22 weeks until viability, with well less than 1% of elective abortions occurring afterwards.
"every sperm is sacred"
"Every sperm is great. If a single sperm is wasted, God gets irate."
Classic.
Republicans need to accept that more often than not abortion restrictions loose elections
I think this move by Ohio Republicans illustrates that they know it's largely unpopular, so they are putting their thumb on the scales in their favor.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any compromises from the god squad.
evangelicalism, the GOP maginot line of the culture wars.
The results in Ohio are going to be, IMO a nationwide result.
A lot of people agree with you. Personally I think as parties continue to splinter voter maps are more important than ever.
attempts to remove the freedom of bodily autonomy from 51% of the voters will be their undoing.
... and good riddance to them.
Their claim the whole time was “it should be up to the people in the individual states to decide”. That was always bullshit of course, a ban at the federal level is their ultimate goal.
It is quite amusing however to see how badly their stated position has blown up in their faces though. Now they are just flat out abandoning any pretense of this being about the will of the people and looking to force their minority will upon the majority.
Yup. It doesn't fool anyone.
For the politicians it's about keeping their slim majorities in power while they still have majorities. The only way to do it is to change the rules while they can to appease their shrinking base of voters. It's not the donor class that votes in the primaries... For the true believer base its any dirty trick is worth it if they achieve their will. They have no honor and no ethics.
what cracks me up is that republicans get their asses handed to them in their special election after trying to rig it in their favor, and the next day they're back wanting to compromise. a-holes...
Hey that's just politics. LOL. What would you expect them to do? Embrace change? Hahaha!
well, it's still a relatively new century. call me a diehard optimist...
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I know you're half joking. I want people to just wake up and understand when they are being manipulated, not be subject to mob violence. That said I'm just going to post this for it's entertainment value...
... just stating statistical probability based upon past world history.
cat food, yard art, and kindling...
... then compost.
... and then happy plants.
Sounds like the republicans are playing dirty pool in Ohio. Get rid of a simple majority on ballot measures and require a 60% majority. I hope the good people of Ohio are looking at their representatives and giving them the stink eye
I'm not so sure about that. This vote is not just a simple ballot measure, but how changes can be made to the State Constitution. For me, I think a 60% majority to make such changes is the better path than a simple majority.
I stand corrected. I read that wrong
After listening to that guy down below...I wasn't wrong. I retract my first statement
The states were NOT worried about this when they had simple majority votes. Now that they are losing by slim majorities on issues like abortion they are changing the rules in their favor. The state's AG is on record saying, "...you know what? It's 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution."
EDIT: Further the Republican ballot measure was almost entirely funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein.
That's what they were working towards, but the ballot measure was to raise to a 60% majority to make any changes to the State Constitution. I personally agree with the 60% majority as it prevents whichever party is in the majority at the time of making changes to the constitution which the next majority party can work to overturn. I think that the constitution is too important to be messed with by partisan politics.
But I see that the measure was defeated so it remains a simple majority to make changes to the State Constitution of Ohio.
Granted.
But to propose a special August election in violation of existing statutes,
at tax payer expense,
for a clearly defined single issue.
The proposal to change the abortion language in Ohio's Constitution is already on the ballot in the upcoming November,
Is just a transparent ploy to head off what the party suspects will be a successful Amendment to Ohio's Constitution.
Given today's result, that is now more likely than it was before.
Yes, but a result of 57.01% to 42.99%.
I'm on the fence. IF state constitutions were too important to be messed with by partisan politics these measured would have been put in place decades ago. They are only now being put in place because the Republicans are pushing base issues like abortion the voting majorities don't like.
I don't like the idea of any majority being handicapped, by one vote or 1% of the vote.
Tyranny of the majority can be as bad as tyranny of the minority. So, yes, I'm on the fence on some of these issues.
Normally I agree with you, but in this case it was a state government trying to nullify the will of their own people by changing the rules at the last second to override the will of their own people. It was basically a giant middle finger to the people of Ohio.
looks like the thumpers are the ones that got the middle finger this time...
... and deservedly so.
Thanks for posting this. I was right the first time
I like what he says about the idea that as people grow older they grow more conservative. He stated why that's not really true. There are people who stay in one place and never progress. They don't like the changes around them and appear to be more conservative. I think they're just stick in the muds who are afraid of change. I haven't gotten more conservative as I grow older.
And another thing he's right about...the republican does need to move more to the left tho I would put it as move more to the center. I think the same thing can be said about Democrats
The far right populist wing has finally over reached with the issues of abortion, the LGBTQ+ save the children boogeyman, meddling into classroom curriculum and book banning. It's too far for the casual everyday liberal and it organizes them to vote like we saw here in Ohio yesterday.
They always lose on social issues. Ya think they would have wised up by now
I like it - what he said at the end was great - 'all this other stuff - it's jingling the keys - it's hey look over here' distractions to the reality.
98% of the votes around the University were NO.
Now some will claim that they were brainwashed and indoctrinated.
Some are. It will take a few election cycles to clean out the truly committed minority. Many of the rest are political opportunists and they will go where their votes and donors tell them to.
It will take until they die of old age. If the anti-democrats win elections, they will use their positions to lock out their opponents. It's important that democrats be permanently mobilized.
What steps are you taking to be “permanently mobilized”?
Baby
Baby? Being silly makes you permanently mobilized?
But they always get stupid and overreach and start in fighting. Just like we are seeing now it pushes others more moderate away and energized the opposition.
left is the only direction a lot of them can go...
... being so far to the right already.
Seems that all most republicans have TG -- dirty pool/dirty tricks
The only way they CAN win most times.
Win for reproductive rights as Ohio voters reject effort to make it harder to amend state constitution
This is good news for Ohio. Now I'm looking forward to watching various state elections in November. Ohio will be one of them.
The state elections are going to be interesting at the very least, EG.
it'll be fun watching certain politicos try to rid themselves of the trump ball and chain...
... while trying to tread water in the 2024 campaign.
John Scalzi is a very good SF writer, who's been one of my favorites for many years. Hugos, Nebulas, whatever. That's his blog: " Whatever ", which is pertinent because he lives in rural southern Ohio.
I like the idea of a 60/40 to change the state constitution. I would be ok with a compromise 55/45. I don't like bringing it up for a vote over one specific issue.
While I don't believe this will help the Republicans I do question how much it will help the democrats in an election. I am not sure how many one issue voters there are or if this issue is enough to push the undecided into the Dem corner. Time will tell of course.
On it's face it's not a horrible idea, but if it was a serious issue it would have been done decades ago. It wasn't until Republicans were getting beat by the current rules did they want to change them.
It depends on how energize Democrats can keep voters. On the single issue of abortion the liberals and enough moderates seem to be quite strongly energized. It was one of the top reasons given in exit polls to vote in the last mid-term. We will see how long this can play out. I expect the Ohio Nov Constitutional change to pass, but how will that translate going into 2024 is anyone's guess at this point.
Both parties need new leadership.
I agree. Generally speaking most people have a short attention span. The republicans are helping to keep it on the front burner with their nonsense. They have another 8 or so months to learn that may not be a good move.
Both parties need new leadership and to learn the word compromise is not a dirty word instead of thinking they should get what they want. Hell, the Stones knew that in 1969, it seems we have forgotten.
Yes. Generally speaking more people care more about The Masked Singer than voting.
Many of them have been trying to caution the others, but unfortunately (depending on one's point of view) there are too many True Believers and those that feel they have to appease their deep red populist base.
this weekend the ohio governor came out asking for compromise, after he and his party tried to scam the voters...
GOP mantra - if you can't steal, try to make a deal...
another red state turns purple or blue in 2024...
Ohio is been a swing state for years now. When one side looks to be overreaching they swing in the other direction until it happens again.
congress needs to address partisan gerrymandering.
That would be tricky. Congressional districts are their states' responsibility.
there's a way.
Small "d" democrats would have to win large majorities in all Red States. Not tomorrow.
... voting/elections no longer matter to republicans.
This is a state issue. WI dems are working on the rep's gerrymandered map now that they have a more favorable state court makeup.
there's a way.
colorado uses a bipartisan group to establish districts.
the GOP will run on a retribution platform in 2024. now it's starting to look like they'll be the victims of it...