In Kansas, the state supreme court had determined many years ago that the state constitution protected the same right to an abortion as Roe v. Wade. At this summer's primary election in Kansas, in advance of midterm elections, an amendment to the state constitution was proposed that would have eliminated that state constitutional right, which was soundly defeated.
An analysis of the results on a county by county basis shows a strong correlation between the amount of Trump support in 2020 and support for the measure to amend the Kansas state constitution to eliminate abortion rights, but a large proportion of Trump supporters didn't support this constitutional amendment.
counties that went 80% for Trump in 2020 voted just now (on average) roughly 40% against the amendment.counties that went 60% for Trump in 2020 voted just now (on average) roughly 55%-60% against the amendment.a null set but reading off the fitted line*: counties that went 40% for Trump in 2020 voted just now (on average) roughly 70% against the amendment.
From this post and the comments to it.
In a very simple model, 100% of voters who didn't support Trump and 25% of Trump supporters voted against the amendment, with some minor county to county variation.
There is also quite a bit of scatter in the more pro-Trump counties. At the high end, in this simple model, almost 40% of pro-Trump voters opposed the amendment (i.e. were pro-choice) and at the low end only about 20% of pro-Trump voters were pro-choice.
This suggests that the Republican coalitions in Kansas vary quite a bit from county to county, resulting in different levels of constitutional amendment support based upon the kinds of Republicans in the Republican coalition in each county. In contrast, there is little scatter in pro-Biden counties since Democrats are far more united on this issue in Kansas.
Of course, the scatter could also be due to Biden voters in strongly pro-Trump counties having different degrees of conservative leanings in these overall very conservative areas (perhaps tracking Catholic v. Protestant proportions in different counties, or the presence or absence of college towns or racial/ethnic minorities in those counties). I don't know the county level demographics of Kansas well enough to determine the likely sources of scatter just from eyeballing the chart and looking at county names. I'd have to do considerable additional research to get a good handle on that question.
Part of the reason for Republican strength from the abortion issue is that a fair share of single issue voters (particularly Roman Catholics, I suspect), vote for Republicans because they are anti-abortion, even though they overall would support Democratic candidates based upon the sum of all other issues.
In contrast, pro-choice Republicans are rarely single issue voters, even though they make up a significant minority of Republicans which helps to resolve the paradox that abortion is a closely divided issue among elected officials nationally, despite clear majorities that don't favor a hard core anti-abortion position on that issue in isolation.
The case of single issue anti-abortion voters also opposing hormonal birth control and IUDs despite the fact that neither hormonal birth control and IUDs are extremely uncontroversial among members of the general public has a similar source.
I particularly like some terminology in a New York Times op-ed about the Kansas vote (although with little data in the op-ed to back it up):
millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump favor a right to a first-trimester abortion — some of them old-fashioned country-club Republicans, others secular working-class voters or anti-woke “Barstool conservatives” who dislike elite progressivism but find religious conservatism alienating as well.
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