The Kansas voters rejected a constitutional change that would have allowed the state legislatures to ban or significantly restrict abortion. This was a surprise victory for supporters of abortion rights.
As the night progressed, the results were still coming in, but the pro-abortion-rights side had about 18% more votes than the other side. This is an astonishing margin in a state where Donald J. Trump was elected in 2020 by a margin just under 15 percent.
Here’s a look.
Even in conservative areas, abortion opponents performed poorly.
Going into Election Day, many observers believed the outcome of the referendum would be determined in increasingly Democratic areas like the Kansas City suburbs — that is, by whether enough voters turned out there to compensate for the very conservative lean of the rest of the state. Even in the reddest areas, abortion opponents fared surprisingly poorly.
Consider far western Kansas as a rural region near the Colorado border, where Republicans are overwhelmingly popular. With about 90 percent voting, Hamilton County voted for Mr. Trump at 81 percent. On Tuesday, 56 percent of Hamilton County’s voters chose the pro-abortion side. Only 60 percent of Greeley County voters voted for Mr. Trump.
While we can talk endlessly about the cities, Kansas is known for being a rural Republican state. This is because the rural Republican areas of Kansas cover enough of the state to be able to, and almost always do, exceed the cities. The rejection of this amendment is not due to strong opposition in the bluest counties but rather lukewarm support.
Yes, swing areas swung to the left.
The cities and suburbs certainly deserve some credit. Despite the narrow margin of victory for abortion opponents west Kansas, it was still possible to open the door to abortion rights supporters.
Wyandotte County is home to Kansas City, Kan. and voted 65 percent in favor of Joseph R. Biden Jr. for 2020. However, Tuesday saw a 74 percent vote for abortion rights. Neighboring Johnson County, the state’s most populous, voted 53 percent for Mr. Biden but more than 68 percent for abortion rights.
It was striking to see how similar the picture was across the board. From the bluest to the most reddest counties, abortion rights performed better that Mr. Biden and opposition to abortion performed worse as Mr. Trump.
High turnout.
We won’t know exactly how many people voted, much less their partisan breakdown or demographic characteristics, until the results are fully counted. But we can already say that statewide turnout was much higher than expected — nearly as high as it was in the last midterm election.
According to preliminary New York Times estimates of the referendum vote, approximately 940,000 Kansans participated in it, compared with 1.05 million voters in the November 2018 midterms. The gap between turnout for general elections and primaries is often much greater than that.
Before Tuesday, the Kansas secretary of state’s office predicted turnout of about 36 percent. As voting ended, Secretary Scott Schwab said to reporters that there was anecdotal evidence that turnout could reach 50 percent. This is an extraordinary increase from what was expected. The Times’s 940,000 estimate would mean 49 percent turnout.
Under normal circumstances, the majority of the voters expected to show up on Tuesday would have been Republicans. That is not only because registered Republicans significantly outnumber registered Democrats in Kansas, but also because most of the contested races on the ballot were Republican primaries, giving Democrats little reason to vote — except to oppose the constitutional amendment.
The Supreme Court scrambled abortion opponents’ calculus.
Abortion opponents’ strategic decisions around the amendment started with the choice to put it on Tuesday’s ballot in the first place. It was expected that the primary electorate would be small and disproportionately Republican. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to assume that the amendment would have a greater chance of passing in this environment than on a general election ballot.
Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, transforming what might have been an under-the radar ballot measure into a nationally monitored referendum on abortion rights. Many voters may have thought the stakes were theoretical. If the U.S. Constitution protects abortion rights, what does it really matter if the Kansas Constitution does? The Supreme Court reversed that decision and Kansas became an abrupt island of abortion access in a sea populated by Plains and Southern states that have banned the procedure.
Both sides flooded the state with advertising spending millions of dollars. Democrats who would have stayed home had their party not had so few competitive primaries on its ballot, voted against the amendment. Anger was the great political motivator that gripped supporters of abortion rights.
The results were clear on Tuesday.
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