Dear John,
I hope you have had a chance to read our latest article on the 2023 midterm elections, "We Told You So: The Abortion Issue Drove the Midterms," from Ms. contributor Linda Burstyn. She spells out the impact abortion rights voters had, and what needs to happen going forward to secure our fundamental right to autonomy.
In the last few days, pollsters are finally recognizing that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and red state legislatures banning abortions were decisive issues in this election. This, after weeks of pundits predicting that abortion had faded in voters’ minds with inflation, cost of living, crime, immigration and other Republican issues emerging as the driving forces in 2022. The mostly all male group of national media pollsters predicted the Democrats would lose at least 20 seats in the House with as many as 40 to 60—as has been the case in past midterm elections for the party in power.
In fact, Ms. published many reports before the election on the potential impact of abortion. It’s Abortion, Stupid—an earlier piece by Burstyn—made the correct prediction that finally is being recognized now AFTER the election against a backdrop pundits predicting a Republican landslide and a “red tsunami.”
In October 2022, Ms. and the Feminist Majority Foundation released polling reports among likely voters in nine battleground states conducted by Lake Research Partners. Survey questions to these critical voters were about their priorities issues in the upcoming election including how they ranked abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. A companion Ms. poll of young voters included many never-before-asked questions on the impact of Dobbs and how abortion related to choices for college, jobs, places to live and more.
The Ms. polls found that among young women voters (in battleground states) abortion and equal rights were the most important and highly motivating issues in determining their vote. And among women voters of all ages in the nine states, abortion and women’s rights were tied with inflation and rising prices in determining their votes. Significant gender gaps favoring Democrats were found across all racial and age groups.
Exit polls proved us right showing that in Tuesday’s midterm elections, abortion was at the front of the minds of voters across the country. And sure enough, voters made their voices heard: in the five states where abortion measures were on the ballot—California, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky and Montana—in resounding numbers voters cast their ballots to secure the right to reproductive autonomy.
These results echoed Kansas’s primary earlier this year, when voters showed up in droves to reject a ballot measure that would have allowed the Kansas legislature to criminalize abortion in the state. “Women voters let the country know that the vote to protect abortion access earlier this year in Kansas was not a fluke,” said Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of Supermajority, in the wake of Tuesday’s results.
Across the board Democratic candidates and progressive ballot measures far outperformed expectations set by the pundits, who had all but declared that abortion no longer was the driving factor in voters’ decisions—eclipsed by concerns over inflation and crime.
“It was abortion that made a huge difference in race after race,” Celinda Lake, President of Lake Research Partners, a top Democratic polling firm, told Ms.’s Linda Burstyn. “In well over half the races, it was the issue of abortion that increased turnout of Democrats and younger voters.”
Equality was on the ballot in more ways than one, this election. Voters in Nevada approved an Equal Rights Amendment in their state constitution—which in addition to prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex and race, goes a step further and explicitly protects people on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.
In the days ahead, Ms. will continue to bring you more in-depth analysis of the election outcomes and what the resulting balance of power in Congress means for advancing the rights of women and people of color, sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice, and gender equality—to name just a few of the issues we regularly cover. And we’ll be reporting on the new feminists in Congress, in state houses and how women fared in the state legislative and judicial races.
