On the Ballot, Abortion Rights Proved More Popular Than Kamala Harris

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On the Ballot, Abortion Rights Proved More Popular Than Kamala Harris

In states like Arizona and Nevada, some voters split their tickets, supporting abortion rights measures while also backing Donald Trump.

Supporters celebrated in Phoenix on Tuesday after learning that Arizona voters had approved an abortion rights ballot measure.Credit...Jon Cherry for The New York Times

By Ruth Igielnik

Nov. 7, 2024

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Democrats headed into the election hoping that abortion rights initiatives would drive support for Kamala Harris in states where the measures appeared on the ballot, including two presidential swing states, Arizona and Nevada.

But while the ballot measures, broadly put, performed well on Tuesday, succeeding in seven out of 10 states, Ms. Harris and other Democrats underperformed them across the map.

In both Arizona and Nevada, more than 60 percent of voters approved measures to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, though more votes remained to be counted on Thursday. But Donald J. Trump appeared on track to win both states, according to New York Times estimates. Abortion rights initiatives also passed in Missouri and Montana, two states Mr. Trump won easily.

Even as a growing share of women said abortion access was central to their vote, pre-election polling suggested that it wasn’t voters’ top concern overall. Fifteen percent of likely voters in an October national New York Times/Siena College poll said abortion was the most important issue in their vote for president, but roughly twice as many listed the economy, or inflation.

The voters who cited abortion as their top concern favored Ms. Harris, 88 percent to 11 percent, and the voters who prioritized economic issues favored Mr. Trump, 72 percent to 24 percent.

In states where the ballot measures passed but Mr. Trump won or was leading, voters had, in effect, split their tickets, supporting abortion rights in their states while also backing a candidate who took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, which had established a nationwide right to abortion. Ms. Harris had made protecting abortion rights a central theme of her campaign.

In Arizona, Proposition 139 will create a “fundamental right” to abortion until about 24 weeks of pregnancy, similar to the standard set by Roe v. Wade. With roughly two-thirds of votes counted statewide on Thursday, about 61 percent of voters had supported the proposition. But Mr. Trump had 52 percent of the state’s presidential vote, compared with Ms. Harris’s 47 percent.

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Organizers followed the results in Phoenix. Even as the abortion rights proposition succeeded, Kamala Harris appeared on track to lose the state.Credit...Caitlin O'Hara/Reuters

The percentages were nearly identical within the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, which includes Phoenix.

Two-thirds of voters in Maricopa County had said they broadly supported abortion access in a September New York Times/Siena College survey. But the economy and inflation were the top issue in the county; voters were 10 percentage points more likely to list economic concerns over abortion access.

In Nevada, 64 percent of voters supported an abortion rights amendment, much higher than the 47 percent who supported Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump was on track to get 51 percent of the vote in the state as of Thursday.

The extent to which voters wanted abortion to be legal appeared to make a difference in their choice for president.

In the pre-election polling, Mr. Trump had trailed among voters who said they wanted abortion to be “always legal,” but fared much better among voters who wanted abortion to be “mostly legal.”

Mr. Trump led among this group, by 50 percent to 46 percent, across the last two national Times/Siena surveys in which the question was asked.

Even though these voters said they wanted abortion to be mostly legal, they were not likely to consider abortion their most important issue. In the surveys, they were three times likelier to mention the economy as their top concern and twice as likely to mention inflation.

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Supporters of abortion access ballot measure in Las Vegas in May.Credit...John Locher/Associated Press

This pattern is not new. For more than a year, Mr. Trump has found significant support among voters who care about abortion access but who don’t consider it their No. 1 issue.

The voters who support Mr. Trump and want abortion to remain mostly legal tend to be slightly older, and are less likely to be college educated. A majority are women, disproportionately white women without a college degree.

These findings, paired with Tuesday’s results, suggest that many voters who would like abortion to be legal did not see Mr. Trump as a threat to abortion access, at least in their states.

Mr. Trump’s changing messages on abortion may have helped him with some of these voters. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, he frequently expressed support for a national ban on abortion, but since the time of the court’s decision he has said several times that he opposes such a ban.

And some voters may not realize that Mr. Trump appointed three justices who helped overturn Roe: In May, 17 percent of voters in battleground states said they thought President Biden was to blame for ending the constitutional right to abortion.

In September, 43 percent of voters nationwide said they did not expect Mr. Trump to pass a national abortion ban if elected. Among voters who said they wanted abortion to be “always” or “mostly” legal and who planned to support Mr. Trump, 77 percent said they did not expect him to pass a national abortion ban.

In Missouri, once considered a bellwether in national elections but now deep red, Mr. Trump won by nearly 20 percentage points. Still, Amendment 3, which removed the state’s abortion ban and established a constitutional right to abortion access, passed with a bare majority, bolstered in suburban St. Louis and Kansas City, counties that went for Mr. Trump.

Abortion rights measures also outperformed Democratic Senate candidates.

In Montana, 58 percent of voters supported an abortion rights measure, while Senator Jon Tester, an incumbent Democrat, lost his re-election bid with only 45 percent of the vote. And in Maryland, 74 percent of voters voted for a reproductive freedom amendment, but the Democratic Senate candidate, Angela Alsobrooks, won her race much more narrowly, with 52 percent of the vote. (She faced a popular moderate Republican.)

The Senate races in Arizona and Nevada were not yet called on Thursday evening, but the Democratic candidates there were locked in tight contests, even as the abortion measures in those states passed easily.

Ruth Igielnik is a Times polling editor who conducts polls and analyzes and reports on the results. More about Ruth Igielnik