Under that strategy, Republican candidates endorsed a ban on abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest and threats to the mother’s life. The theory was that this position would look more reasonable to centrist voters than a more comprehensive ban would. One flaw in the theory, or at least the execution, was that Democrats were more willing to talk about abortion than Republicans were — and they said Republicans wanted to ban abortion, period.
The outcome of the election has left strategists in both parties thinking Democratic tactics have been vindicated — “Abortion wins elections” is becoming a popular slogan on the left — and Republican ones discredited. Some Republicans have their knives out for Youngkin.
But this reaction fails to appreciate just how audacious Youngkin’s goal was. Virginia is a blue state. It has been nearly 20 years since the heart of the Old South voted for a Republican presidential candidate, longer since it elected a Republican senator. Virginia went for Biden by 10 percentage points in 2020.
Obviously, that didn’t stop Youngkin from winning in 2021. Blue states sometimes elect Republican governors, just as red states sometimes elect Democratic governors. Handing over full control of the state government to the other party is something else entirely. Only two states, New Hampshire and Georgia, have one party in full control of the government even though they voted for the other party’s presidential candidate. Zero states have given one party full power at the state level while giving the other party a double-digit margin in the presidential race.
Sean Trende, one of the two special masters who drew the district lines for the Virginia legislature (as well as a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute), has written that the map was designed, in keeping with Virginia’s partisan leanings, “to be hard for the GOP to win a trifecta under, but not impossible in a perfect storm.” The battleground districts for control of the state legislature were therefore often in areas that have voted for Democrats in presidential and congressional elections.
Republican Emily Brewer, for example, ran for the state Senate in a district that had voted for Biden in 2020 and for Democratic congressional candidates last year. The same is true of the senate districts that Republicans Danny Diggs and Tara Durant ran in. Democrats ads slammed them over abortion. All three narrowly won, contributing to a net gain of one senate seat for Republicans. Eight Republican candidates for the lower house won seats in districts that had gone for Biden, too, even as the party lost seats overall. As the Associated Press reported, Republicans carried most of Virginia’s swing districts. It just wasn’t enough for a majority.
As a result, Youngkin won’t have the opportunity to sign a 15-week abortion ban into Virginia law. But that doesn’t mean it was a political mistake for Virginia Republicans to support a 15-week ban or that Republicans in other states should run away from one. In many cases, Republican candidates who supported that limit on abortion were able to withstand attacks over it and win in light-blue areas. If Republicans nationally could advance as deep into Biden territory as Virginia Republicans just did, they would win the 2024 elections comfortably.
The Virginia results are being misinterpreted, in part, because Ohio passed a referendum to protect legal abortion at the same time — and because that result followed several other victories for legal abortion in referendums. But Ohio itself offers evidence that a lot of voters who support legal abortion in an up-or-down vote will also support candidates who disagree with them about it. Its Republican governor signed a law banning most abortions before getting reelected handily last year.
The question that has worried pro-life Republican politicians is whether they can survive and even prosper while continuing to favor limits on abortion. Their defeat in Virginia, oddly enough, is a promising sign.
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