No, Taking Pro-Life Stances Doesn't Harm Republican Candidates

Since Dobbs v. Jackson was decided in June 2022, commentators and analysts have repeatedly blamed abortion for virtually every GOP loss at every level of government. It’s a pretty remarkable theory: that abortion bans in a minority of states would propel tens of millions of people to put abortion at the center of their voting habits, and that suddenly they would care much less about the economy, national security, and education than they did before Dobbs.

Yet we are told that this theory is a certainty, and that the evidence speaks for itself. This is coming from many of the same sources who predicted that Trump would lose in 2016 and that the Republicans would sweep in 2022. The GOP should ignore these voices and instead look at the most relevant data.

The first set of data to consider is governor races. Governors have the ultimate authority to approve or veto abortion bans. If a majority of voters in a state are truly concerned about keeping abortion legal, then governors who ban abortion should expect to struggle for reelection. Since Dobbs however, that has not been the case. Eleven GOP governors were up for reelection in 2022 after having signed an abortion ban, including three governors from states that voted twice for Obama and one from a state that voted for Biden. All eleven of them won reelection, and none of the races were very close.

Ohio voted for Obama twice, yet Gov. Mike DeWine won reelection there by an astounding 25 percent after having signed a heartbeat ban into law. Iowa also voted for Obama twice, and Gov. Kim Reynolds won by 18 percent after signing a six-week ban. Florida voted for Obama twice as well, yet Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection by 19 percent after signing a 15-week ban. Florida voters also gave Gov. DeSantis a supermajority in the state houses, which he used to sign a six-week ban after the election. This was a massive improvement over DeSantis’ 0.4 percent margin of victory in 2018.