Missouri Is the Perfect Case Study for What Went Wrong This Election
How did a state that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump also support all of the Democrats’ policies at the ballot box?
Kamala Harris lost in the state of Missouri on Tuesday, keeping with the expected results from polls prior to Election Day. But three progressive ballot initiatives won in the state: legalizing abortion, increasing the minimum wage, and defeating a wage raise for law enforcement.
In addition to Donald Trump’s easy 18-point victory, Republican Senator Josh Hawley cruised to reelection, defeating Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce by nearly 15 percentage points.
Abortion was enshrined in the Missouri Constitution by a three-point margin, while a minimum wage increase of $1.25 per hour each year until 2026, reaching $15 per hour, passed by a whopping 15 percentage points, according to the latest results.
Missouri voters even rejected a raise for law enforcement officers by more than 20 percentage points. So why did voters in the Show-Me State reject Democrats but support their policies? The answer seems to be an indication of what went wrong for Democrats during this election. While Harris and Kunce support abortion rights, voters did not connect them to their defense on the state level.
The same goes for the minimum wage: Harris came out publicly in support of a $15 minimum wage two weeks ago. But was that too late to reach voters in Missouri or the country at large? And the point can be raised as to how much the Harris campaign publicized her support for the increase. Plus, she only came out in favor of $15 per hour after Trump’s stunt of pretending to work at a McDonald’s.
Harris campaigned heavily on abortion rights as well, but it wasn’t enough to persuade the same Missouri voters who voted to protect them—something that will undoubtedly have Harris and her campaign agonizing over. What could they have said or done differently to stress Trump and Republicans’ threats over abortion? It goes to show that legal abortion is more popular than the Democratic Party, as Melissa Gira Grant wrote for The New Republic last month.
Voters in Missouri, and perhaps the country, in effect drew a distinction between the policies they support and the candidates who backed them. Democrats didn’t reach the voters who supported their policies, and there’s also the possibility that voters simply didn’t know what candidates like Kunce and Harris stood for. If that’s the case, the party needs to look at the ineffectiveness of their messaging, and how spectacularly it failed.