constitution. politico reports this on the fallout of the referendum, quote, turnout soared in canas despite advisory and little else to draw democrats to the polls yet in a state where trump beat president joe biden by 15 percentage points in 2020, the amendment was failing badly in a brushback to republican legislators who are preparing to move legislation s stricting abortion, and if the politics of roe proved fruitful for republicans in kansas, it will be even more treacherous for the gop and swing more moderate swaths of the country and here s how abortion rights advocates pulled it off according to the new york times, quote, registered republicans far outnumber democrats in kansas and they made explicit appeals to unaffiliated voters and center right voters. in interviews last week in johnson county, texas, a number of voters said they were registered republicans and opposed the amendment, a dynamic that certainly played out across the state given the margin. the resu
comfortable voting by lying to them or sending them a misleading message and it means that you don t believe that on the merit you can persuade voters. again, you also saw in one of these groups who were trying to persuade voters to vote yes. they were claiming that it didn t actually take away women s rights to abortion and reproductive care which would have technically been true and that s basically what this amendment did and that s what voters in kansas understood and that s why they showed up in the numbers that they did and another number that speaks to this moment and it will be interesting to see if they can turn it into an electoral issue instead of just an issue vote, but it is originally going in, was there a sense that for this amendment, for the no camp to win, blue, urban, dense areas would have to outperform in turnout which they did. turnout was significantly higher, but it wasn t that the
what happened here? my reporting in the past has grown that groups like the aclu nationally and their chapter in kansas had been organizing pumping money into educating voters across the state in kansas and other places about this exact ballot measure and educating people, michael on the fact that their state constitution is really responsible for your ability to have access to an abortion or not because of what the supreme court has done and so they spent hours and they ve been knocking on doors and educating people and a big thing about this that even anti-abortion leaders will admit is they said democrats did a good job of messaging on this issue and not so much focusing are you pro-choice or for abortion or rather are you for constitutional freedoms? do you want to make a change to the state constitutional and that language is more appealing to moderates as seen in the
we always knew that the polls showed that voters, republicans, democrats and independents strongly support abortion rights and last night proved that theory to be absolutely true. so, ashley, meanwhile on earth, too. what s the reaction from republicans from within the state and across the country? any signs that they re going to be looking to try this again? well, look, even when you looked at the republicans in kansas or the vote yes camp, the people who wanted this amendment that would essentially take away constitutional protections for abortion, even their language sort of recognized the basic political reality in the polls which is that the majority of the country and it s not just democrats, believes in some sort of access to abortion. people draw the lines in different places, but things like exceptions for rape, incest
bill and abortion rights, and so i would say they re having a really good summer. so i actually want to pick up on this momentum and the efforts by some that want to blunt momentum. pacs sent out misleading text messages ahead of the vote. a text meant that approving that measure could allow the republican-controlled legislature to outlaw abortion would safeguard choice if the amendment fails. constitutional protections would remain in place, buttressing the current law that allows abortion in the first 22 weeks of pregnancy and it seems like supporters of the amendment used every trick in the book and yet somehow they still lost on this one. yeah. that s exactly right. i mean, it was not a winning argument for them as the congresswoman and alexy and i mentioned on the merit when you re trying to get someone to vote in a way they don t feel