Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
On a Friday night in late October, Vision, wearing a black pantsuit, took to a stage in downtown Houston to show his support for Vice President Kamala Harris. Beyoncé didn’t support Harris as a musician, an influencer, a Democrat, or even Texas’ most famous daughter.
As a mother, she said, she supports “mothers who care deeply about my children and the world in which all of our children live.” “A world where you can freely control your body.”
The rally, in which a Texas gynecologist and woman who denied medically necessary abortions shared the stage with Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, was held in the wake of Roe v. Johnson’s inversion of abortion access, women’s health, and women’s health. , the climax of a national presidential campaign focused on reproductive choice. Wade in 2022. Texas, which has had abortion restrictions longer than any other state, was “ground zero” on the issue, Harris told the screaming crowd of 20,000 people.
Ten days later, Republicans routed Democrats in Texas and across the country. Exit polls showed President Donald Trump easily won the state by 14 points, gaining support among nearly every demographic group, including women. Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Colin Allred by nine points. The Texas Supreme Court race, which Democrats sought to position as the state’s best bet on an abortion referendum, was overwhelmingly defeated by Republicans.
This is a devastating loss for Democrats, who had believed it would be a “low-bember” wave of voter registration, rising turnout, and a silent defection of women who had previously supported Trump. It was. More than 70% of Texans want to expand exceptions to the state’s abortion law, including cases of rape, incest and birth defects, according to a poll.
But Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, says that wishing a law was different means people automatically vote for the party they think is less responsible for making that law. I say it’s not.
“There was no indication that abortion was going to be the motivating issue that Democrats expected,” he said. “I think the big question to ask is, why did the campaign assume something was going to happen based on the data that was available that all of that data was wrong?”
home economics
According to exit polls, support among women in Texas is split almost down the middle between Trump and Harris, a slight shift to the right since the last presidential election. While this broadly reflects Republican victories across many demographic groups, it also shows that Democrats have failed to mobilize the independents and undecided voters they expected to be outraged by the abortion ban. Henson said.
Texas voters may disagree with abortion laws, but polls over the past few years have consistently shown that they continue to prioritize economic issues. Just a month before the election, both men and women said their biggest concern was the economy, followed by immigration and inflation. Only about 10% of women said abortion was the most important issue, as did 2% of men.
Laura Merrifield Wilson, a political science professor at the University of Indianapolis who studies gender issues in politics, said “social issues” rarely trump economic issues.
“When things are going well, people are concerned about social issues, reproductive health, bodily autonomy and government regulation,” she says. “When people feel that the price of eggs is getting too high or they’re worried about the future of gas prices, they don’t care as much about other social issues.”
Gabriel C. Perez | KUT News
Republicans have been eager to tackle the economy, linking Harris to President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and stoking fears of an economic recession. Meanwhile, Democrats were unable to fully connect President Trump to the state’s new abortion laws. President Trump boasts of appointing three Supreme Court justices who ruled by a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to enact their own abortion laws, while banning abortion nationwide. He also muddied the waters by saying he would not sign the bill.
“Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz and all of them ran a campaign that said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to do anything,'” said Mary Ziegler, a reproductive health law expert at the University of California, Davis. he said.
That left Democrats with the responsibility to communicate what they fear Republicans would do to further restrict abortion and what they pledge to do to expand access. . Neither path will be easy, and Democrats will have to explain complex legal theories like the Emergency Medical Care Act, the Affirmative Labor Act, and the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from the 1800s that bans the mailing of abortion-related items. There is.
Ziegler said many voters may have thought, “I don’t think the federal government can do anything about abortion, but I think the federal government can do something about inflation.”
“Rather than choosing between two things you really care about, it’s choosing between something that doesn’t matter and something that matters.”
This is evidenced in states like Arizona, Missouri, and Montana, where voters overwhelmingly supported ballot measures to protect access to abortion, while also voting against Mr. Trump and the Republican Party. . In Amarillo, voters firmly rejected an anti-abortion “travel ban,” even though the city’s county voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
“Voters say they support abortion rights, but they just aren’t worried about Trump or Republicans in Congress,” Ziegler said. “Essentially, ‘I can advocate for abortion rights and I can support Republicans,’ but I don’t think Harris or Biden have been particularly good at explaining why that’s not true.”
In August, Amanda Zulawski, a Texas woman who nearly died from an infection after doctors delayed treating her miscarriage, spoke from the Democratic National Convention stage about the impact of Texas’ abortion law. Women in Texas told similar stories in ads and on the campaigns of Democratic candidates.
Despite these harrowing stories, it’s still difficult to get voters to understand that this could happen to them, said the former state senator and gubernatorial candidate, now with Planned Parenthood Texas Vote. Wendy Davis, who is active in the project, says:
“Especially for a lot of voters who don’t have a lot of information, what they were feeling in their day-to-day lives, the kitchen table, the pocketbook issues, really resonated with me,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s fair to say it was a mistake for Democrats to run on that issue. I think we should have had both situations.”
Henson said there could have been a way to frame abortion as an economic issue, focusing on women’s labor force participation. But given Biden’s approval ratings and the public’s economic assessment, he said trying to slightly reframe the abortion issue would be like “moving your deckchair to get a better look at the iceberg.” said.
The overwhelming state and national Republican victories mean that at least Texas’ abortion law won’t be repealed anytime soon. Because the state does not have a mechanism for residents to submit ballot measures directly to voters, the law will remain in place unless the makeup of the Texas Legislature changes.
In 2026, Ziegler said, Democrats will likely hear more stories from Texas about health care delays and denials, and may be able to more clearly point out the threat posed by President Trump on this issue. He said no.
What message both parties will send on abortion going forward will depend on what President Trump does over the next two years and on the myriad of other issues that voters say motivate them. greatly influenced by.
“I think the danger for Republicans is that they interpret this as an obligation to take a tough stance on abortion, when the election wasn’t actually about abortion for the vast majority of voters,” Ziegler said. he said. “And for Democrats, they interpret this as a sign that they shouldn’t talk about abortion, which is one of their stronger issues, because they haven’t done enough to overcome their weaker issues. .”
Disclosure: Planned Parenthood and the University of Texas at Austin have financially supported the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by contributions from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. See the complete list of them here.
