Happy Tuesday! It’s column day - and this week you get the one that I sidelined last week because Trump got indicted (AGAIN) right around when my column publishes (AGAIN) and I pivoted to write about Trump since no one was going to pay attention to anything else.
This week I discussed more about why we’re seeing ballot initiatives in red states go whichever way favors more open abortion policies than what the states have enacted. In short, very, very few voters ever vote for their representatives based solely on one issue, and abortion is no different despite its outsize role in our politics. You can and do see specific issues move Republican vs. Democrat elections in close races, but you have to have close races. These states are illustrating that we can’t just assume the voters like everything their representatives do or they’d “vote them out!” It’s not that simple — or perhaps it is that simple in solid states: You’re not going to move an electorate 10, 15, 20+ percentage points based on a single issue.
Read the column here, ungated until 8/31.