#GOP alarms go off after Ohio abortion vote

The huge voter turnout against a special ballot measure in Ohio that would have made it tougher to protect abortion rights is setting off alarm bells among Republican strategists who say abortion will be problem for their party in 2024.  

Republicans hope to win back control of the Senate and keep their House majority but acknowledge abortion politics will “complicate” their chances of winning key races in even conservative-leaning states, such as Montana and Ohio, where Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are up for reelection.  

The potency of the abortion-rights debate in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was on full display in Tuesday’s special election in Ohio — a state former President Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020.  

A Republican-backed measure to make it tougher to amend the state constitution to protect abortion was soundly defeated — 57 percent to 43 percent — after more than 3 million Ohioans voted, including 700,000 who voted early. 

“It shows that abortion continues to be a very tricky subject for Republicans post Roe reversal,” said a Senate Republican strategist, citing the public backlash to the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion.  

“Independent college-educated women, even those who lean to the right, are breaking in a way that they never have on the abortion issue. Before the Roe reversal, independent right-leaning women were almost a lock for Republicans but now it’s not so clear,” the strategist added.  

“The centrist and center-right women in the suburbs, they are breaking in a different way than they ever have in the past. This was a very tricky issue for Republicans in the 2022 midterm, and it’s obviously a very tricky issue for Republicans in an off-year awkwardly timed election like we saw in Ohio,” the source added.    

Democratic strategists say the huge voter turnout in Tuesday’s election is an early sign that Democratic and independent voters will be highly energized by abortion in 2024. 

“Abortion persists as a major mobilizing and motivating issue and persuasion issue. We saw record high turnout in Ohio, it was a little over 3 million,” said Celinda Lake, a prominent Democratic pollster.  

“We saw mobilization of voters that hadn’t even voted in 2022. In the early vote alone, there were 30,000 voters who voted in [Tuesday’s] election that hadn’t voted in 2022 and they were largely women and African American women,” she said.  

Lake said there was a “19-point shift” compared to the 2020 election, when Trump defeated Joe Biden, 53 percent to 45 percent, and the shift “was really across the board.” 

“It provides a roadmap for victory in Ohio in 2024; it provides a roadmap for victory, I think, nationwide,” she said. “We made tremendous gains in the suburbs. 

“There had been some questions about whether abortion is still salient and that was resoundingly answered on Tuesday,” Lake added.  

In the battle for the Senate, Republicans enjoy a favorable map in 2024 that will see Democrats defending more vulnerable seats.

But if Democrats can mobilize their base over abortion rights and convince the electorate that it is a critical issue in the Senate races — as well as the presidential contest — it could help them judging from the results in Ohio.

Republican and Democratic strategists say abortion will be most problematic for Republican Senate and House candidates in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are also four presidential battleground states.  

It’s also likely to move votes in Republican-leaning states where Democrats are up for reelection — notably Montana and Ohio.  

The issue could also come up as a ballot initiative in Arizona, where activists are circulating a proposal to establish a fundamental right to abortion that the state may not deny. 

All of those states are seen as Senate battlegrounds.

Montana voters defeated a measure in November that would have declared an embryo or fetus a legal person with right to medical care if born prematurely or it survived an attempted abortion. 

West Virginia, another Senate battleground, is a special case because incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin (D) describes himself as an anti-abortion independent Democrat. 

Ohio measure defeated in Trump country

The Republican ballot measure in Ohio was defeated by large margins even in counties that Trump won in the 2020 election, such as Mahoning and Trumbull counties in the state’s gritty industrial northwest. 

The ballot measure failed more narrowly in Ashtabula County, which Trump carried with 60 percent of the vote in 2020. It also failed in Geauga and Lake counties outside Cleveland, which Trump won.  

“Number one, it was about abortion. That’s the most immediate thing,” said Ohio-based Republican strategist Bob Clegg of Tuesday’s election results.  

The measure, known as Issue 1, would have required amendments to the Ohio constitution to secure a 60 percent supermajority of state voters in order to be adopted. It would have also required proposed amendments to be signed by 5 percent of the electors in each county. 

“I live here in Delaware County, a northern suburb of Columbus, and it even got defeated up here and other suburban counties,” Clegg said, referring to the suburban county outside the state capital that Trump won with 53 percent of the vote in 2020.  

“They had good messaging on the other side about democracy and majority vote,” he noted, adding: “It was about abortion. Everybody knew that.” 

“It was a matter of getting each side psyched up to vote and they just had more people on their side,” he said.  

Other negative signs for GOP

The resounding defeat of the ballot measure, which became kind of a proxy battle in the war over abortion rights, comes a few months after Democrats won a key state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, where the results were also driven by abortion politics. 

In that race, Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee County, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative and former state Supreme Court justice. 

The abortion debate is especially hot in Ohio right now because Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in 2019 signed a law criminalizing abortion after six weeks, once a fetal heartbeat can be detected.  

Voters will return to the polls in November to vote on a constitutional amendment that would allow patients to obtain abortions up until a fetus becomes viable outside the womb sometime between the 22nd and 24th week of pregnancy.  

Clegg predicted that the abortion debate will continue well beyond this November’s election in Ohio.  

“Whether the amendment passes in November or not, we’re not going to be done with it here in Ohio,” he said.

But Clegg questioned whether Brown, who usually focuses on progressive labor and economic opportunity-related issues, will want to focus on abortion.

“It’s going to depend a lot on the national environment. My guess is if Biden is doing well in the presidential race, he’ll probably use it.” 

Michael Esler, a professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University, who specializes in American politics and public law, said voters who voted against the measure thought “the rules of the game were being tinkered with to get to the abortion outcome the Republican Party preferred.” 

He said the abortion issue is “going to help” Brown’s reelection bid.  

“The public opinion in Ohio and elsewhere has been pretty steady since the Dobbs decision came down. If the trend holds as I expect it to that would be an advantage for a pro-choice candidate like Sherrod Brown,” he said.  

He said the abortion issue “is more significant for independent voters.” 

“Independent women have been pretty strong in breaking against these bans on abortion, so I’d expect that to continue,” he said.