The New York Times reports:

Going into Election Day, many observers believed the outcome of the referendum would be determined in increasingly Democratic areas like the Kansas City suburbs — that is, by whether enough voters turned out there to compensate for the very conservative lean of the rest of the state. But abortion opponents did surprisingly poorly even in the reddest places.

Consider far western Kansas, a rural region along the Colorado border that votes overwhelmingly Republican. In Hamilton County, which voted 81 percent for Mr. Trump in 2020, less than 56 percent chose the anti-abortion position on Tuesday (with about 90 percent of the vote counted there). In Greeley County, which voted more than 85 percent for Mr. Trump, only about 60 percent chose the anti-abortion position.

We can talk about the cities all day long, but Kansas is known as a rural Republican state for a reason: Rural Republican areas cover enough of the state that they can, and almost always do, outvote the cities. The rejection of the amendment has as much to do with lukewarm support in the reddest counties as it does with strong opposition in the bluest ones. [Continue reading…]