Expert was certain red state would ban abortion — until one email landed in his inbox

Just 10 days ago, Steven Rogers says he would have predicted Missourians were set to reinstate an abortion ban this November.

Then the latest polling results landed in his inbox. Now the professor of political science at Saint Louis University says he’s not so sure.

Of 900 likely Missouri voters surveyed in August by the SLU/YouGov Poll, of which Rogers is director, 44% opposed the abortion ban and 43% supported it. The remaining 13% were unsure, according to the latest survey released Thursday. The poll took place between Aug. 13 and Aug. 24 and has a margin of error of roughly 4 percentage points.

In November, Missourians will be asked if they want to repeal a reproductive rights amendment voters approved in 2024 and reinstate an abortion ban with limited exceptions for survivors of rape and incest and medical emergencies. That proposal, placed on the ballot by the legislature, will be listed on the statewide ballot as Amendment 3, the same name as the 2024 abortion rights amendment.

In the latest poll, the abortion ban garnered more support among men, with 46% of those surveyed in support compared with 40% of women in support. Republicans were three times more likely to vote in support of the amendment than Democrats. Only 20% of Democrats said they planned to vote in favor of the ban; 65% of Republicans expressed support.

The strongest support for the abortion ban amendment came from Missourians in southeast and northwest Missouri. Those polled in the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas expressed the greatest opposition.

“The path is there. Let’s get it done,” Tom Estes, a leader with Her Health, Her Future, the campaign advocating for the abortion ban amendment, said of the poll results on social media.

The August results erased a gap that had favored the amendment several months earlier.

Polling done in February, with the latest results updated after YouGov changed its weighting strategy, showed an 11 percentage point margin between the “yes” and “no” votes, with 50% of those surveyed saying they planned to support the abortion ban amendment and 39% saying they planned to oppose it.

“Politicians made it abundantly clear that Amendment 3 was designed to overturn the will of voters and ban abortion,” Tom Bastian, a spokesman for Stop the Ban, the campaign effort to defeat the amendment, said in a statement. “As more Missourians are tuning in to the election, it’s not surprising to see a growing number of voters saying NO to Amendment 3 to stop the abortion ban and protect reproductive freedom in our state.”

The 2024 vote that overturned the state’s 2022 near-total abortion ban and created a constitutional right to the procedure up to the point of fetal viability passed with support from 51.6% of the nearly 3 million Missourians who cast a vote.

A few months before the 2024 vote, a SLU/YouGov survey found that 52% of Missourians polled planned to vote for the reproductive rights amendment; 34% planned to vote to keep a ban in place.

Rogers said he doesn’t foresee the polling results lining up as perfectly this time. But he was able to compare responses from 305 people who took the survey in both February and August. Among that sample, 17% of the people who supported the abortion ban in February flipped to opposition, and 14% flipped from oppose to support.

While the August poll only asked for Missourians’ view on Amendment 3, the February poll asked more specific questions around both abortion and gender-affirming care for minors. The survey found that 59% of Missourians support abortion access through at least 8 weeks of pregnancy.

The same survey also found a majority of Missourians opposed access to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, with 66% of those surveyed opposing hormone therapy or medications for minors and 72% opposing gender transition surgeries.

This matters because November’s Amendment 3 would also place a ban on gender-affirming care for minors into the state constitution. This type of healthcare has been banned in state law since 2023. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the ban earlier this year.

Proponents of Amendment 3 say a more permanent ban is needed, noting that the ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones expires in 2027, though the ban on surgeries is permanent. Those opposed to the abortion ban amendment decry the ban on gender-affirming care as ballot candy meant to bring more people to the polls in favor of the amendment and distract from the effort to reinstate an abortion ban.

When comparing the latest polling results with those from August 2024, Rogers said they found both Democrats and Republicans are less-supportive of the reproductive rights amendment this go-around. That was also the case for non-white voters.

He suspects that Republicans’ decision to attach a ban on gender-affirming care for minors to the proposed abortion ban accounts for some of that shift.

But the increase in opposition to the proposed abortion ban between the February poll and August poll came from several groups, including young, elderly and male Missourians, he said.

In general, he said the latest poll results points to increasing discontent with those in power.

Trump, Kehoe post first negative approval ratings in new Missouri poll

The August SLU/YouGov poll also found both President Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Kehoe’s approval ratings among Missourians took a hit since February.

In that span of several months between surveys, voters shot down a few major Republican policy proposals, including an attempt to make it more difficult to amend the constitution using citizen-led initiative petition process, which is how the reproductive rights amendment currently in place was passed.

“A general theme of the (August) poll is that people are upset,” Rogers said, noting that most of the Republican establishment didn’t fare well in the latest survey, nor in the primary. “If that carries over into November, then this Amendment 3 may fail.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.