It's quite a contrast: On November 6, the New York Times published a disastrous poll for Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential election. According to the survey, the president was markedly outpaced by Donald Trump in five of the six states considered uncertain. A mixture of anxiety and nervousness swept through the Democratic ranks and most commentators.
It only took 24 hours for these feelings to be replaced by euphoria. Tuesday, November 7, was election day in several American states. It brought positive news for these same Democrats, reassuring them in particular about their ability to rally large numbers of voters, something that the polls ignore. As well as rejecting Trump's excesses, they once again used abortion as their flagship issue.
Since the Supreme Court's decision in June 2022 to overthrow constitutional protection for the right to abortion, leaving the matter to be decided by each state, Republicans have been outvoted in every election where the issue has come up. It also played a major role in the Grand Old Party's disappointing mid-term elections in November 2022.
On Tuesday, Ohio voters were asked to decide on two issues: abortion and marijuana. They opted to legalize the possession and sale of the soft drug, making Ohio the 24th state to do so. But above all, they decided by a comfortable majority to enshrine abortion as a right in the Ohio Constitution. This was a way of protecting the state from the onslaught of the religious right.
This is a remarkable victory for the defenders of reproductive rights in a conservative state: It sends out a clear signal that the anger over the Supreme Court's decision has not abated among the Democrats, but also among the unaffiliated and independents. This is all the more true given that the Republicans have been unable to adopt a strategy of compromise on this issue. The October 25 appointment of Mike Johnson as the new speaker of the House of Representatives is hardly reassuring on this point, given his very radical commitment to abortion.
In Ohio, as in other local referendums lost over the last year and a half (Kansas, Montana, etc.), conservative campaigners and Republican elected representatives knowingly spread lies about the consequences of a yes vote, for example by raising the prospect of "abortions on demand" at all stages of pregnancy. In other states, such as Arizona, reproductive rights activists are seeking to organize similar referendums.
In a statement, Biden welcomed the result. "Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide," the White House said.
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