Kansas abortion vote shows limits of the GOP’S strength
TOPEKA, KAN. » An increase in turnout among Democrats and independents and a notable shift in Republican- leaning counties contributed to the overwhelming support of abortion rights this month in traditionally conservative Kansas, according to a detailed Associated Press analysis of the voting results. A proposed state constitutional amendment would have allowed the Republicancontrolled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban abortions outright.
But Kansas voters rejected the measure by nearly 20 percentage points, almost a mirror of Republican Donald Trump’s statewide margin over Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. In the aftermath of the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision to repeal a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, the threat of new restrictions in the state galvanized
Democrats and independents more than anticipated. At the same time, Republicans showed less interest in turning out to support the measure.
The findings reinforce a sense in both parties that the Supreme Court’s decision may have altered the dynamics of this year’s midterm elections. Here’s how it played out:
In 2020, Trump carried Kansas by 18 points. But not a single county in the state favored the ballot measure as much as it had supported the former president, the AP found.
In 99 of the state’s 105 counties, support for the abortion measure was more than 10 percentage points lower than its support for Trump against Biden. In 29 of those counties, that difference was more than 20 points. And in 14 Kansas counties that Trump won, majorities rejected the amendment. “The anti- abortion politicians have just overplayed their hand on these bans,” said Tamarra Wieder, director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates
in Kentucky, where another abortion measure will be on the ballot in November.
The Kansas county with the largest drop from the presidential election to the abortion referendum was Greenwood, in rural southeast Kansas. Trump won nearly 80% of the vote there in 2020, but there was about a 30point shift on abortion, with voters narrowly favoring “no,” the position that leaves abortion rights in place for women in Kansas.
Beyond counties that flipped entirely, dozens of deeply Republican counties saw voters favor the abortion amendment as expected, but by much narrower margins than their preference for Trump two years ago. Near Topeka, for example, 72% of voters in Pottawatomie County backed the former president’s reelection, while just 57% supported the amendment. Abortion opponents said they were stunned by the margin of the results.
“I was surprised for sure,” said Ruth Tisdale, executive director of the Advice and Aid Pregnancy
Center. “I thought that it would be a closer outcome either way.”
It wasn’t just the amendment’s margin of defeat that jolted the political consciousness. It was also the seam- busting turnout in what otherwise should have been a normal, low- turnout primary in a midterm election year.
The latest AP tallies show that more than 922,000 votes were cast by Kansas voters on the abortion referendum. That’s about twice as many voters as turned out for the state’s previous midterm primary election in 2018, and it’s about as many as turn out for Kansas’ midterm general elections in some years.
The most recent electorate also was considerably less Republican than in a typical Kansas primary. From 2010 through 2020, Republican primary ballots outnumbered non- Republican ballots by about 2to- 1. In this month’s election, according to the Kansas secretary of state’s office, the two groups turned out in nearly equal numbers.
Advocates on both sides of the amendment spent more than $ 14 million blanketing Kansas with ads and signs, knocking on doors and calling voters, according to campaign finance reports.
That effort helped attract an unusual variable in Kansas primaries: independent voters. That group is eligible to vote on referenda but not for candidates. Campaign ads emphasized that “no affiliation” voters could indeed vote on the abortion question. It worked: Around 184,000 more votes were cast for the abortion amendment than voted for governor, a likely barometer to measure their portion of the vote.
Value Them Both Coalition, the main group in Kansas that fought in favor of the amendment, called it a “temporary setback.”
The Kansas City Star reported that the state plans to recount the vote after a citizen posted a $ 200,000 bond for the recount Friday to the secretary of state’s office. Kansas elections director Bryan Caskey told The Associated Press it would be the first recount of votes on a statewide ballot question in at least 30 years.