In some ways, the 2024 election results seem incomprehensible. Majorities voted in favor of abortion rights in eight of the 10 states where the issue was on the ballot. But Americans also elected the man most responsible for the demise of those same rights. And in several states where abortion won, so did Donald Trump.
How could significant numbers of voters cast their ballots for legal abortion and also for the man who helped make it possible to criminalize abortion in the first place? Mr. Trump boasted about overturning Roe v. Wade and being the most pro-life president in American history, while Kamala Harris pledged to use her presidential power to protect and expand a broad range of reproductive freedoms. Yet, according to the vote tallies released so far, in every state where abortion was up for a vote, more voters cast those ballots for abortion rights than for Ms. Harris.
The positions of these voters are indeed incoherent. But they’re also reflective of the new political coalition Mr. Trump has built, and the kind of men and women who back him.
Abortion rights measures passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York; abortion rights secured well over half of the vote in Florida, although not enough to reach the 60 percent threshold to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution. (Abortion rights measures also failed in Nebraska and South Dakota.) Mr. Trump won the three states where abortion rights failed and he’s on track to win more than half of those where they passed, often by significant margins: In Montana he won by about 20 points, and in Missouri by nearly as much.
The first explanation is perhaps the most obvious: Mr. Trump successfully distanced himself from the abortion mess he created. His comments about abortion have been all over the place this cycle — he’s bragged about appointing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe and claimed that he wouldn’t support a national abortion ban, despite voicing support for a partial ban in the past. Project 2025, which Mr. Trump has tried to distance himself from despite having close ties to many of its authors, includes reversing Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion pills and criminalizing the mailing of the drugs.
Mr. Trump seemed to know these plans would be, to put it mildly, vastly unpopular, and there’s some evidence voters bought his attempt to play dumb about them: Nearly half of voters who say abortion should be legal in most cases, and more than a quarter of pro-abortion-rights voters generally, backed Mr. Trump, according to CNN exit polling.
There’s something quite Trumpian about the “I’ve got mine” style of politics that might drive someone to vote for abortion rights in her own state while not caring whether the president she picks will strip those rights from women elsewhere. There are women who may want to secure abortion rights for themselves, or men who want those rights for their daughters, but who would vote for Mr. Trump to crack down on immigrants and other groups they find distasteful.
In Arizona, for example, exit polls suggest that more than 60 percent of women voted to enshrine abortion rights into the state’s Constitution, while only about 50 percent voted for Ms. Harris. (Among men in the state, exit polls show that about 60 percent voted for the abortion ballot initiative, and less than 50 percent for Ms. Harris.) Across racial demographic groups, support for the initiative was significantly higher than support for the pro-abortion-rights candidate.
The Trump coalition is a heavily male one, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly run on racial and gender grievances. But the men who support Mr. Trump are not only the evangelical conservatives of the George W. Bush era, although white evangelicals remain core to his base. Mr. Trump has courted “Barstool conservatives,” men who might not be particularly religious or anti-abortion but seem to enjoy Mr. Trump’s sexism and vulgarity. These men may not oppose gay rights even if they’re vaguely homophobic; they may not oppose abortion or contraception and they’re sexually active (or at least wish to be). They’re more libertarian than Christian nationalists. But they’re often deeply misogynistic and find Mr. Trump’s strongman shtick and his offensive persona appealing.
They’re also not new in American politics. In the 1960s and ’70s, there were large numbers of men who supported abortion rights and contraception access because they were sexual libertines who appreciated having greater sexual access to women without the responsibilities of pregnancy or parenthood. These men may have been pro-choice and even liberal Democrats, but they didn’t seem to be great supporters of women’s rights and in many cases treated women quite badly — Hugh Hefner may be the most prominent example.
For decades, the G.O.P. was less the party of Playboy than of religious patriarchy. Under Mr. Trump, it expanded to cater to a broader range of men: Those who, like JD Vance, resent childless cat ladies for refusing to adhere to traditional gender roles (or perhaps for not being sexually available to men who think they are entitled to women’s affections) and those who, like Mr. Trump, seem to see women primarily as sex objects and who support abortion and contraception because those tools facilitate male sexual freedom. Neither group truly views women as equals. Both are willing to back an overtly sexist man like Mr. Trump. But unlike the traditional men of the religious right, many of the Barstool men will no doubt vote for abortion rights, too. And so will many Trump-supporting women.
Many of these voters may also chafe at supporting a woman, even as they ostensibly cast their ballots in favor of women’s rights. Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended the era of legal abortion across the United States, news outlets have run story after story about the damage that has been done, including women who have died, nearly died, lost organs or become extremely ill because of abortion bans. Many of these stories are of women with wanted pregnancies gone wrong — women who are often talked about as someone’s wife or daughter or mother. These stories are crucially important to understanding the human cost of abortion bans, and they’re highly effective in shoring up support for keeping or making abortion legal. They also keep women in the particular narrative frame of would-be mothers or innocent victims.
Mr. Trump’s pitch to women was that he would be their protector. Ms. Harris’s pitch was that she would restore women’s freedoms and their independence. It turns out it is quite possible to want to preserve abortion rights in order to protect the women you imagine might be your wives or daughters, while remaining suspicious of women seeking actual power — and that this might be true of female voters as well as male ones.
Support for abortion rights is tied up in broader views about women and our role in society, as those who oppose abortion also tend to be more sexist. The freedom to make one’s own reproductive choices is a prerequisite for anything resembling gender equality, and without the rights to abortion and contraception, we would see far fewer women going to college, delaying childbearing until they are ready and thriving professionally — and running for office. But a vote for abortion rights is not necessarily a vote for female autonomy or political power, and does not a feminist make. Plenty of voters are willing to check a box if they think that will help keep women safe. But that doesn’t mean these voters are enthusiastic about unfettered female freedom — or even willing to put a woman in the White House.
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