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But the evidence suggests that when two candidates are on the ballot, support for abortion rights does not override partisanship. Many pro-choice voters are still quite willing to vote for Republican candidates. In Kansas last August, for example, voters by 18 points defeated an attempt to amend the state constitution to specify that there was no constitutional right to an abortion. A few months later, in the November general election, Democrat Laura Kelly was reelected governor by two points over a pro-life Republican nominee. It is probable that many pro-choice voters in Kansas opted to vote for a Republican when given a choice of parties at the ballot box.

Another example: Voters in Ohio, as everyone knows, have now voted twice in favor of abortion rights. The first instance came in August, when they defeated by 14 points a referendum that was designed to make it harder to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Then, a ballot initiative to do just that passed easily by 13 points last month. But this is the same state that, in November 2022 (after the Dobbs decision was rendered), reelected by more than a million votes GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, who signed a bill limiting abortion to six weeks with no exceptions thereafter. Voters also backed pro-life Republican J.D. Vance for the Senate by 6 points over the generally pro-choice Democrat, Tim Ryan.

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Ohio is something of a microcosm of both the Democrats’ opportunity — and challenge. President Biden’s 31-point margin in Franklin County in 2020 (an area that includes Columbus and its inner suburbs) widened to 46 points last month for Issue 1, a 15-point swing when abortion in on the ballot. And in greater Cincinnati (Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties), a far more conservative area, the swing was even larger: Donald Trump carried the four counties by 7 points in 2020, but Issue 1 was approved by a 14-point margin, a 21-point swing. And yet the state is still Trump’s to lose in 2024; he won Ohio in both 2016 and 2020, and polling so far has Trump leading Biden in the state by 10 points.

Further complicating the issue is the........

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