Abortion Rights and the 2024 Elections

On the 2nd anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I figured I'd share a reminder of how abortion rights has become the most powerful single issue in politics, and is likely more salient now than it was in 2022.

When the decision was handed down two years ago today, it was a shock but not a surprise, given the leak several weeks earlier. We were left with an open question of how it might impact the 2022 elections. The first answer would come 39 days later, from Kansas of all places.

This election was chosen to be unfavorable to abortion rights, a GOP state in a traditionally low turnout election. The only public poll showed the constitutional amendment contest very close. I remember seeing this tweet not long after polls closed:

I wasn't shocked by the result, again, polls showed it close. But I was surprised that the margin was seemingly so large for the pro-abortion rights side that Wasserman could call it so quickly. I immediately set out to understand how this transpired.

Looking at new voter registrations in KS between the Dobbs decision and the primary registration deadline, I found a stat that I assumed I had miscalculated. So I ran it again and again. The same thing every time. Almost 70% of Kansans registering to vote were women.

I shared that finding in a tweet and a hastily assembled chart the next day. To be clear, I have never seen a registration surge among any specific group like this before, and don't expect to again.

The next day I ran a count of new registrants by gender in a few other states and found that substantial gaps were emerging in some places (WI, MI, CO), but not others (NY). This was the first sign of what we would see happen in November, an uneven effect.

Two weeks later, Democrats won a special election to the US House in Alaska. Then another the following week in upstate New York, where the Democratic candidate ran on abortion, and urged Dems to run fearlessly on the issue

N.Y. Special Election Shows Power of Abortion Debate to Move Democrats (Published 2022)Pat Ryan, a Democrat, warns against “pulling our punches” on abortion and other issues during the midterm elections.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/us/politics/ny-special-election-abortion.html

In early Sept of '22 I wrote this NYT opinion piece stating my belief that abortion had reshaped the midterm elections, presenting the ample evidence from the August elections. Most of the political establishment seemed sold.

Opinion | Women Are So Fired Up to Vote, I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It (Published 2022)Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, women have registered to vote in incredible numbers.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/opinion/women-voters-roe-abortion-midterms.html

Fast forward to October 17th. The NYT released its latest national poll, with shocking results. Independent women, who gave Dems a 14 pt margin in their September survey, had supposedly swung to give GOPs an 18 pt advantage.

What happened next should have been (and still should be) a cautionary tale when it comes to poll subgroup driven media narratives being treated as reality. This article, and the pictured paragraphs below especially. nytimes.com/2022/10/17/us/…

Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds (Published 2022)With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/us/politics/republicans-economy-nyt-siena-poll.html

Given the strong track record of the NYT poll, the results were taken as gospel for many. Dems had overplayed their hands on abortion, failing to focus on the economy and immigration, and were paying the price. Abortion had faded as a salient political issue, or so we were told.

I encountered this myself, when appearing on a panel on a CNN program opposite a GOP consultant. When I spoke about how I believed abortion rights would change the election, the host asked if that was plausible, given how long ago the Dobbs decision was.

Those polls were wrong. While the narrative today is that the '22 polls were historically accurate, the reality is they failed when depicting what issues were most salient. Nate Cohn later referred to this error as on par with the misses of '16.

So what happened in the '22 elections? In states and races where abortion rights were perceived as at stake, Democrats overperformed massively. MI, PA, WI, AZ, etc.. but elsewhere (NY, CA, etc), the election was as you would have expected in a "normal" midterm.

The lesson was clear - Democrats must put abortion rights on the ballot everywhere, be it literally, or figuratively through the messaging of the candidate campaigns.

In '23 I wrote a follow-up to my original NYT piece, making the case that abortion rights had only increased in salience. By then we had seen how GOPs had failed to run from their record on the issue in VA, and lost by massive margins in an OH amendment.

Opinion | American Elections Are About Abortion NowThis week’s electoral victories for abortion rights offer lessons ahead of next November.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/abortion-presidential-election-biden.html

This year we had our first sign of the issue expanding into places where it hadn't reached in '22. The special election to fill George Santos' NY district saw Dems communicating heavily on abortion rights, and outperforming the polls and past precedent massively (and winning).

Here we are, two years later. There is little to celebrate in this post-Dobbs hellscape where millions of women remain deprived of a fundamental human right, thanks to Donald Trump's extremist judges, and GOP elected officials around the country. But there's also hope.

That hope comes from the many Americans who are organizing around this issue, fearlessly, holding Republicans accountable, making it clear that it isn't nearly enough to not pass a national ban, and that nothing short of restoring rights will be enough.

This is why I am confident that abortion rights will be even more salient in the 2024 elections, and those who run on the right side of the issue will stand a far better chance of winning.

Sorry, I went on a lot longer than I meant to, there's just a lot of data to share!