Why Dobbs Didn't Deliver a Win for Democrats

Running against GOP abortion bans had been the Dems secret weapon

Democrats have won every major election since Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Justices overturned Roe v. Wade. With Kamala Harris running against the person most responsible for overturning Roe, there was every reason to believe that Dobbs would once again deliver a victory for Democrats.

Throughout the campaign, Trump bragged about overturning Roe. He adopted a “state’s rights” position suggesting that he supported the most severe bans in the nation, including the one in Florida, which he presumably voted for on Tuesday.

When Biden was the candidate, 90% of his campaign’s ads mentioned abortion. Harris was, perhaps, the party’s best messenger on the issue. The portion of her convention speech covering abortion tested through the roof. Her campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on powerful ads like this one.

When the exit polls were released Tuesday evening, they showed that 65% of voters thought that abortion should be legal, and only 31% said it should be illegal. This had to be great news for Kamala Harris, right? Were 15% of pro-choice voters really going to vote for the guy who made abortion illegal in large swaths of the country AND promised to restrict access further if he won?

As it turns out, yes. Trump did better across the board than four years ago before Dobbs.

What the hell happened? I am still parsing through the results but here are some thoughts.

1. Was There a Post-Dobbs Surge?

I want to start with the important and oft-repeated caveat that the exit polls are notoriously imprecise. To understand the election results, we need to wait months for reports from Pew Research and Catalist. However, the exits can give us directionally correct information for today's purposes.

One of the big questions was whether Dobbs would lead to a surge in support for Harris among women. Before the election, many believed this campaign would lead to a historic gender gap. Well, according to the exits, Harris won women 53-45. In 2020, according to Pew, Biden won women by more — 55-44.