We've known it for years: the conventional wisdom about rural voters and abortion is wrong
With just over six weeks til the Election, abortion is a front and center issue for voters. As it should be. There are abortion rights ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York and South Dakota.
We want to make something really clear: Abortion rights are vital for rural communities and are supported by a strong majority of rural voters. Now, anyone who has worked in politics in rural areas can tell you that one of the first things we were often told is: you shouldn’t talk about abortion and other social issues, like same-sex marriage. The conventional wisdom was that social issues are what are killing Democrats in rural communities. At Rural Organizing, we’ve actually consistently found that not to be the case — in fact, these days, abortion is one of the only policies that’s actually moving voters. So, yes, once again, the conventional wisdom about rural voters was wrong. Fortunately, others have noticed.
This week Politico reported on the “different campaign” Kamala Harris is running:
“Harris’ team sees room to grow among many of the types of voters located in the smaller cities, exurban locales and rural areas that she is now visiting: older, mostly non-college-educated, white voters.”
Harris’ team believes that she can win over enough voters in swing counties and rural areas by touting her plans to fight price gouging, lower prescription drug costs and restore abortion rights to make a significant difference in the state. They also think she can appeal to some of them with a message about preventing chaos in the White House.
That the Harris/Walz campaign is leaning into the abortion issue might be surprising to some. To us, it makes perfect sense.
So many of us were outraged by the recent ProPublica article about the death of Amber Nicole Thurman because of Georgia’s abortion ban. These state bans pose a very real crisis in rural communities. Here are just a few headlines from the past few months:
Iowa OB/GYN: Abortion bans harm rural health care broadly
As Abortion Laws Drive Obstetricians From Red States, Maternity Care Suffers
Idaho is losing OB-GYNs after strict abortion ban.
Maternal health care is already a pressing issue for many rural communities. As Axios reported in January, “More than half (55%) of the nation's rural hospitals don't offer maternity care, as challenging economics and labor shortages force more rural facilities to stop providing labor and delivery services.” Those are very real and serious issues facing rural communities, made worse by Dobbs and state abortion bans.
And, we know those bans are not popular in rural communities.
In the summer of 2020, Rural Organizing conducted a poll of rural voters in battleground states and asked about abortion. Specifically, we asked How Strongly do you agree with the following statement: Should Abortion be illegal?
This was before the Dobbs decision when a lot of people believed that law wouldn’t be struck down. At the time we asked, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still on the Court
The results showed a lot of opposition to that idea. In most states, those who disagreed outnumber those who agreed. And strongly disagree was the biggest number in every state and nationally.
After the Dobbs decision, the first test of the impact on voters took place in Kansas on August 2, 2022, when voters went to the polls to decide if they no longer had a constitutional right to abortion. The anti-abortion forces lost by a huge margin: 59-41. A lot of political observers seemed stunned by that outcome. We weren’t.
The Topeka Capitol-Journal reported,: ‘That split is decisive’: Abortion amendment fails — with unexpected help from rural Kansas voters
Republicans in Kansas usually rely on eye-popping margins in rural areas like Jackson County to offset expected losses in Douglas County, which includes Lawrence, the Kansas City metropolitan area and, potentially, Wichita.
But on the constitutional amendment, those margins were either muted or completely non-existent.
In Osage County, 71% of voters supported former President Donald Trump in 2020. On Tuesday night, the "no" vote won with 56% of the vote on Value Them Both.
Such stories were common across Kansas.
Once the threat became real, voters responded and rejected efforts to restrict abortion.
In 2022, we did another poll to determine the impact of the Dobbs decision on rural voters. In late September of 2022, Kerry Eleveld wrote about our findings,Polling shows abortion rights to be a definitive issue among rural battleground voters:
Even in rural America, supporting abortion rights can definitively help Democratic candidates this cycle. That's the takeaway from a new poll released by Rural Organizing/YouGov Blue.
In fact, a candidate's pro-choice position was the most important issue tested among rural voters polled in 10 battleground states, even outpacing party ID (i.e., being a Republican), which came in second. The survey asked respondents to choose between pairs of randomly generated candidates with different attributes including their party identification, race, sex, attitudes on abortion, attitudes on energy investments, attitudes on tax policy, whether they have been endorsed by the Farm Bureau, and their position on the Farm Bill.
Interestingly, when voters were asked what they believed other voters prioritized, being a Republican (party ID) surpassed other attributes by a long shot, with supporting renewable energy coming in second and being pro-choice falling to fifth. So despite what most voters actually prize, they are convinced their peers have very different priorities.
According to many of the DC-based prognosticators, the 2022 elections were supposed to be a referendum on the economy. As we all know, that’s not what happened. On abortion referendums in key states, the side favoring abortion rights prevailed:
In Kentucky, by 52.35-47.65 margin; In Montana, the breakdown was 52.46 - 47.54. And, in Michigan, where Democrats swept to a trifecta, the constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights prevailed 56.68-43.42.
In all of those states, as well as California and Vermont, many rural voters cast their ballots for abortion rights.
Another test came in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April of 2023. Again, the forces aimed at protecting reproductive rights prevailed by a wide margin in a very competitive state. At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent, spoke to Wisconsin polling guru, Charles Franklin:
One big question is what happened with non-college-educated White voters, particularly those in rural and small-town areas, a heavily Republican demographic. Wisconsin has a higher percentage of those voters than the other “blue wall” states Trump won in 2016 — Pennsylvania and Michigan — making the state a good test of whether Democrats can recapture them.
One might surmise that a pro-choice message motivated educated suburbanites to swamp non-college-educated White turnout, without Protasiewicz improving among that latter demographic. But Franklin noted that she did surprisingly well in “rural and working-class areas” in southwestern counties that Trump carried twice, and made “inroads in rural counties up the Mississippi River.” He concluded: “That’s really notable.”
Then, we got to Ohio last year. Rural Organizing was on the ground for both referendums - August and November. Since June, our local canvassers have knocked tens of thousands of doors, and talking to nearly 7,000 likely and persuadable voters about the importance of defeating Issue 1 in August, then passing Issue 1 in November. In addition, we distributed thousands of yard signs to voters in rural communities.
These two factors came together this year to pass a groundbreaking constitutional amendment that enshrines into Ohio law the right for every individual to make their own choices on contraception, abortion, miscarriage care and fertility treatment.
Yet, JD Vance, who campaigned against those measures, made it clear he wants a national abortion ban and continues to dismiss the voters of his state and so many others on this issue. In the current Ohio Senate race, incumbent Sherrod Brown is a strong advocate for abortion rights while his opponent, Bernie Moreno, made a significant contribution to the campaign trying to defeat the2023 measure. He also supports abortion bans.
In Montana, Jon Tester is another strong advocate for abortion rights. His opponent, Tim Sheehy, doesn’t.
Our work in those two referendums in Ohio this year gave us invaluable insights into the outreach that needs to be done and Rural Organizing is doubling down on our winning strategy for 2024. We are working with partners and rural activists in Montana to support their ballot measure. And, in key states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, we’re providing tens of thousand of yards signs to rural activists, knowing those generate multiple conversations
Abortion is on the ballot - from the top of the ticket to every downballot race. And, anyone who thinks this issue won’t help in rural communities is just wrong. It’s literally a matter of life and death for many.