Abortion rights activists say Tuesday’s decisive victory in Ohio has created a political “roadmap for 2024,” NBC News reports.
Ohio voters resounding rejected a measure that would have made it harder to modify the state’s constitution that was backed by Republicans, who sought to require a 60 percent supermajority to make such changes instead of a simple majority.
Veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the news outlet that Tuesday’s win shows that the issue of reproductive rights could boost Democrats’ prospects in 2024.
The GOP setback over abortion rights is the seventh since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case in June 2022.
“As long as sex is salient, as long as people can get pregnant, this issue is remaining very salient,” Lake said.
“This is going to be the roadmap for 2024. Because issues matter,” Lake said. “Democrats should just not underestimate this issue and should continue to utilize it.”
Conservatives echoed a similar view.
"The Ohio result tonight, coming on the heels of the shellacking in Michigan and the unexpected loss in Kentucky, needs to be a five-alarm fire for the pro-life movement," Patrick Brown, a conservative scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, tweeted on Tuesday.
National political reporter Sahil Kapur writes for NBC that Republicans face a “no-win conundrum.”
“Retreating on abortion would infuriate the majority of their base that wants to ban the procedure, while their current strategy is alienating a formidable slice of swing voters who favor some GOP positions but oppose the party’s stance on reproductive rights,” Kapur writes.
Kapur notes that before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it was Republicans who were more mobilized on the issue, and that now, “That’s over.”
