The Coney Barrett Effect
By 
Persuading enough of the relatively small but critical number of swing voters is both the hardest and most important part of a competitive electoral campaign. There are multiple reasons why the red wave never washed ashore, but Supreme Court Republicans overruling Roe was either the most important or near the top of the list:
Days earlier, the 2022 election looked bleak, if not disastrous, for Democrats. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings hovered in the low 40s, gas prices were ticking up, and crime in big cities was high. And then there was the hard historical truth: Since World War II, presidents had lost an average of more than two dozen House seats and four Senate seats in midterm elections.
But in that focus group in Michigan — and, in the months ahead, dozens of others held by Democrats and Republicans across the country — campaign strategists kept making the same startling finding: Abortion hadn’t simply awakened Democratic voters. It was actually persuading swing voters. The memo, obtained by POLITICO, called it a “massive vulnerability for Republicans” — a conclusion bolded and underlined.
On Election Day, voters in critical states like Michigan and Pennsylvania ranked abortion — not inflation or crime — as the most important issue in the midterms, according to exit polls. The red wave never arrived. Instead, Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and Republicans, badly underperforming expectations, barely took back the House. Democrats also held onto a slew of governor’s mansions, from Wisconsin to Oregon, that otherwise may have slipped out of reach, and won control of four legislative chambers. Republicans failed to flip a single one.
These findings are also consistent with the surprisingly good Dem performance being more about persuading swing voters than mobilizing. (This is good news for 2024, when urban turnout is likely to recover, while Dems should be able to hold a lot of suburban voters who voted Dem over Dobbs.)
As the story goes on to say, the political news is not unambiguously good — Dobbs didn’t stop Texas from remaining solid red or stop Florida’s ongoing rightward turn (granting that most abortions are still legal in the latter.) And needless to say none of the political benefits are remotely worth it! But what happened has happened, and the unpopular Republican position on abortion is going to be a crucial thing to emphasize going forward — it’s the rare issue that can actually peel soft Republican voters away. And it’s not a one-shot event, because Republicans aren’t going to stop pushing restrictions, state or federal.