Could an Abortion Rights Referendum in Missouri Give Democratic Candidates a Chance?

Missouri used to be a swing state, where Democratic presidential candidates made last-minute campaign stops and sometimes won, and where Democrats frequently held the governorship and US Senate seats. Of the 25 presidential elections in the 20th century, Democrats won 14—even electing one of their own, Harry Truman, as vice president in 1944, and president in 1948. Bill Clinton carried the state twice and, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama came within 4,000 votes of winning it. The state sent a Democrat, Claire McCaskill, to the US Senate through 2018; and it had a Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, who made national headlines for blocking Republican attempts to restrict access to abortion. Now, however, Missouri has an anti-choice Republican governor, two extreme right-wing US senators, and a habit of voting for Donald Trump.

But could Democrats stage a comeback in Missouri in 2024, perhaps making Joe Biden’s reelection bid in the state competitive? Could the party’s likely US Senate nominee, progressive populist Lucas Kunce, have a fighting chance to flip the seat now held by Republican Josh Hawley? Is it a reasonable prospect that the party’s likely gubernatorial nominee, state House minority leader Crystal Quade, might renew Democratic control of the statehouse?

If access to abortion remains the winning issue that it has been since the US Supreme Court overturned national protections with its 2022 Dobbs decision, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Missouri might renew its battleground-state status. That is because Missourians are now expected to vote in November on a high-stakes abortion rights referendum that could shake up the state’s politics.

The lesson from recent elections around the country is that a referendum of this sort has the potential to significantly increase turnout by pro-choice voters. A significant portion of those voters could, in turn, boost Democratic races for national and state posts.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, a coalition of reproductive health care advocates that has been campaigning to place an abortion amendment on the fall ballot, needed to file 171,592 valid signatures by the end of last week to secure a ballot spot. On Friday, the deadline for filing signatures, a long line of activists began delivering to the Missouri secretary of state’s office boxes containing more than 380,000 signatures. That’s double the requirement for qualifying for a November referendum vote on overturning Missouri’s abortion ban and codifying reproductive rights in Missouri’s state constitution.

“Our message is simple and clear,” says Tori Schafer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and spokesperson for the campaign. “We want to make decisions about our bodies free from political interference.”

There is no question that support for abortion rights crosses political lines. Republicans in a number of red states have joined Democrats in backing ballot measures protecting reproductive rights, and that will surely be the case if there’s a November referendum vote in Missouri.

But Democrats believe that the Missouri referendum, like similar ballot initiatives in Florida and Arizona, could also attract young people and other likely pro-choice voters to the polls. The Democratic hope is that these voters would not only back the referendum but also boost the fortunes of Biden, Kunce, and Quade.

Quade, in particular, has been an outspoken advocate for a referendum. That’s primarily because she is a committed supporter of abortion rights who wants to defend personal freedoms. But as a savvy political figure who leads her party’s caucus in the state House, Quade is well aware of the impact that popular support for abortion rights has had in recent election cycles.