It used to be real simple. After all, you’ve been a loyal Republican all your career. You signed that pledge years ago to overturn Roe v. Wade, you went on Fox News to nod up and down and gush to Laura Ingraham about how those awful pro-choicers had no respect for life. You put your anti-abortion credentials on your website for all to see: “Respect for the sanctity of life” and all that fluffy jargon, in big bold letters. You gave speeches, your people put ‘em on YouTube, and that was OK! Hell, it was more than OK, that was a big key to your success, and you were damn proud of it. Just draw in and secure the votes of all those devout religious types and just like that, you were a Republican nominee! Sign that petition on the dotted line? Not a problem! Highlight that National Right to Life Committee endorsement? Of course! Brag about your Family Research Council connections? Put ‘em front and center in the newsletter!
Because back then (in the “before” time) you knew it would never be an issue that could come back to haunt you. Yes, most of those nutty pro-choice people probably weren’t going to vote for you, but you already knew that. And it wasn’t like this issue was going to ever dominate your upcoming campaigns. I mean, abortion was still legal, right? No urgency, nothing to motivate voters against you. Abortion, really? That was like number 20 on peoples’ lists of important issues. It ranked even lower than climate change! The only people who cared about it were embittered, old, graying feminists, waving their tattered copies of Our Bodies Ourselves, and, again, they weren’t going to vote for you anyway, so who cares?
And now, suddenly, you’re in the crosshairs. It’s been less than two years since the goddamn Supreme Court overruled Roe and everyone seems to care what you said or did for the last decade. You’ve tried scrubbing your website. That didn’t work. You’ve deleted those YouTube videos and purged your social media feeds but some smartass collected screenshots and reposted them. You’ve even tried bald-faced lying about your record, and that hasn’t worked either. Everywhere you turn it’s another damn ad against you on the TV, saying the same thing over and over again. And the reporters’ questions, every time you walk out your front door! Support for that national abortion ban? You can’t even remember when you signed on to that one. Fetal personhood? Imprisoning doctors? No exceptions for rape and incest? Who in the hell remembers what they said in 2020? It all sounded good at the time.
Until it didn’t. And now, suddenly, it matters. A lot.
Nate Cohn, writing for The New York Times Friday, reports on the peculiar phenomenon of Democrats’ unusual overperformance in special elections since the Dobbs decision:
Almost every time polls bring Democrats down, there’s a special election result to bring them back up. Special elections occur outside regular election cycles to fill a vacated seat, and overall Democrats have outperformed Mr. Biden’s 2020 results by four percentage points in these elections since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to data compiled by Daily Kos.
Cohn’s analysis draws heavily on general election data to suggest that the turnout and demographic differences among Democrats in special elections are really, really not representative or predictive to general elections.
As Cohn points out:
In the typical special election, half of voters are 65 and over. Nearly every special election voter has participated in a recent primary election. Almost everyone is a registered Democrat or Republican. Young voters, irregular voters and independent voters are much scarcer. The nonwhite share of voters is typically smaller. A general election poll with these demographic characteristics would be laughed out of the room.
As a result, special elections behave very differently from higher-turnout elections. They’re mostly decided by turnout, as the electorate consists almost entirely of the most partisan and least persuadable voters.
That analysis seems correct and sensible as far as it goes, but in light of Dobbs, simply comparing turnout numbers and demographics between special and general electorates would appear to miss a critical point: There has not yet been a post-Dobbs presidential election. 2024 will be the first. There has, however, been a midterm election (different than a special election), one in which Democrats performed quite well. Some might say abnormally well. Cohn concedes that data on special election electorates “may offer insight into which party’s activist base is more energized, but not much more.”
But the degree to which a party’s “activist base” is energized—whether in a midterm or a special election—can also correlate to the degree to which a general electorate is energized. And Dobbs has, by its draconian and far-reaching import, unquestionably energized Democrats, putting Republicans on the defensive. There has never before been an issue in which a full one-half of the U.S. electorate has literally faced its own autonomy being devalued. The scrambling of Republicans—from Donald Trump to Nikki Haley and (very soon) all the way down the ballot—is the best evidence that Republicans see the danger looming in 9 months’ time.
My suspicion is that as the Biden campaign ramps up its anti forced-birth message against Republicans everywhere, a substantial portion of the overall Democratic electorate is going to be energized by the issue, particularly given the attractive and unavoidable aspect of Trump as a target for that energy. Democrats are also working to put abortion referenda on every state ballot possible, because they believe that will inspire Democratic turnout. Those Democratic voters promise to be—in Cohn’s parlance—quite “partisan” and among the “least persuadable.” They are also going to include “young voters,” “irregular voters, “ “independent voters” and “nonwhite voters.” That being the case, as Nov. 5 looms, the 2024 election may well end up being more “special” than anyone anticipated.