Meditating upon the results in Kentucky, John McCormack asks:
Again, the abortion issue was probably a contributing factor in the race, but if the abortion issue were decisive for a given voter, why would he cast a ballot for the pro-life attorney general candidate and against the pro-life gubernatorial candidate?
That’s a good question. Another one is: If the abortion issue were decisive — or even massively important — in Kentucky’s electoral politics in the post-Dobbs era, then why didn’t it show up in the state’s legislative elections last year? Kentucky passed a near-total ban on abortion in 2019. This went into effect in the summer of 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. And five months after it went effect, the people of Kentucky returned 80 Republicans and 20 Democrats to the state’s House of Representatives (that’s five more Republicans than had been returned in 2020), and returned 31 Republicans and 7 Democrats to the state’s Senate (that’s one more Republican than had been sent in 2020). Why? It’s not as if they didn’t know who had passed the law.
Abortion is playing a role in our politics at the moment. Perhaps, in the context of a standalone referendum, it would surprise us in Kentucky, too. But it doesn’t seem to be the cause of Andy Beshear’s win.