KY Amendment 2 discussion thread

[ReallySuper]

I went canvassing this weekend in a relatively small town/rural county (Trump +25, Beshear and Bevin basically tied) and encountered mostly No voters (although I think this is more to do with being given a list of mostly liberal/left-leaning doors to knock than with the general mood of the state). A number of people said they were pro-life but that this amendment went too far by prohibiting abortion in every case with no exceptions, or that they felt it wasn't the government's or the constitution's place to interfere.

Obviously, a similar amendment was defeated in Kansas this year, so I'm hopeful it will be replicated here. But equally obviously: 1. Kentucky is not the same as Kansas, and 2. this amendment being on the November ballot in a red-trending year rather than in August doesn't help. On the other hand, the Yes and No campaigns in Kansas were fairly evenly matched in terms of campaign spending. In Kentucky, the No campaign has outspent the Yes side nearly 15:1 and has outraised them 8:1. But then it seems like every church in the Commonwealth has done free campaigning for Yes, so we'll see what happens.

[ReallySuper]

Yeah, well I do not want my tax dollars going to pay for someone’s abortion..

I hope you know that your tax dollars don't do that now and wouldn't do that regardless of if the amendment is defeated, since public financing of abortion in Kentucky has been prohibited by law since 1980.

[ReallySuper]

Update with half the vote in:

No - 55.3%
437,410

Yes - 44.7%
353,283

[ReallySuper]

Update with half the vote in:

No - 55.3%
437,410

Yes - 44.7%
353,283

52% in: 55.0-45.0% (442,516-363,969) NO

Obviously the amendment won't fail by 10 points, so is there a particular region (likely including Louisville and/or Lexington) these first half of votes have come from? Or is this mail-in votes being counted first? (Does KY even have mail-in voting?)

It's hard to tell exactly, but based on what has been reported from the Senate race, it looks like >75% of Louisville, Lexington and Franklin County are in now. Kentucky has limited mail-in voting but more importantly had three days of no-excuse early voting. I'm not positive that those are being reported first but if so they probably skew No.

[ReallySuper]

Over two-thirds of the vote now in:

No - 54.4%
574,022

Yes - 45.6%
481,993

The raw margin is approaching 100,000 (although might be starting to narrow now rather than grow)

[ReallySuper]

With 75% in:

No - 53.5%
626,040

Yes - 46.5%
543,717

Margin has fallen to 7 percentage points and less than 83,000 votes.

[ReallySuper]

Midnight update, 82% in:

No - 52.8%
667,288

Yes - 47.2%
596,092

Worth noting that Warren County (Bowling Green), Bullitt County (Louisville suburb) and Woodford and Scott Counties (Central Kentucky/Lexington suburb) haven't reported yet, and I expect all of them to be varying degrees of No (all but Bullitt voted for Beshear in 2019, and the generally Republican suburban counties around Louisville have been voting No so far)

[ReallySuper]

The major No campaign organization (Protect Kentucky Access) has asserted victory. No leads Yes by 71,000 votes with 85% reporting.

[ReallySuper]

The major No campaign organization (Protect Kentucky Access) has asserted victory. No leads Yes by 71,000 votes with 85% reporting.

Is there a county map of this somewhere?

Yeah, the NYT has probably the best one: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-kentucky-constitutional-amendment-2-no-right-to-abortion.html. USA Today has one as well: https://www.usatoday.com/elections/results/race/2022-11-08-ballot_initiative-KY-18878/

[ReallySuper]

The AP has officially called the race for No. Apparently ABC News called the race first just after midnight when PKA declared victory.

[ReallySuper]

precinct map bc why not https://davesredistricting.org/join/447efb96-12fb-4165-b223-f524f8f95af8



not especially surprising--obvious urban-rural divide is obvious, who would've guessed (with generally republican but socially liberal suburbs voting no along with urban areas). the glaring central ky vs. the rest of the state divide is interesting though: every precinct in franklin, woodford, fayette, bourbon and nicholas counties voted no. even rowan county, somehow

[ReallySuper]

How did Elliot County vote

59% Yes

Honestly less than I would have expected. There is an interesting echo of the old divide in SE Kentucky between the traditionally Democratic and traditionally Republican areas, too.

IDK, my overall impression is that the amendment did "well enough" in Eastern KY (generally >60% Yes even in the ancestral Dem coalfields) but underperformed more dramatically elsewhere.  

A similar amendment passed narrowly in WV back in 2018 (you could argue it was all theoretical back then, but IDK with Kavanaugh having just been confirmed).  Interestingly, the KY pro-life amendment did better in Eastern KY than the WV amendment did in Southern WV.  There just weren't any large cities to vote it down in WV.

The Tennessee pro-life amendment back in 2014 massively underperformed in the eastern mountains but still generally passed.  The big difference from KY 2022 was that it passed in all the Nashville suburbs counties.

The 2020 Louisiana pro-life amendment was in its own world where the pro-life vote clearly exceeds the generic Republican vote.  Over 60% yes just about everywhere but downtown NOLA and Baton Rouge and over 70% in most of the rural counties.

Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis. oldkyhome above was making an interesting parallel to the 2019 gubernatorial race and although it's not a perfect comparison, it does show why the Yes vote lost by the margin it did: even though it overperformed Bevin by raw vote percentage in Eastern Ky., it pretty much uniformly did worse in (much more populated) Central and Northern Kentucky:

[ReallySuper]

Yeah, I think that's a fair analysis. oldkyhome above was making an interesting parallel to the 2019 gubernatorial race and although it's not a perfect comparison, it does show why the Yes vote lost by the margin it did: even though it overperformed Bevin by raw vote percentage in Eastern Ky., it pretty much uniformly did worse in (much more populated) Central and Northern Kentucky

On this note, a cursory, very rough county count indicates to me that the amendment failed in KY-04 (Thomas Massie's district) - by a margin that might be similar to the statewide count; notable since the seat is nominally several points to the right of the state; Beshear lost it by nearly 8. I'm less sure about the exact margin, though, since I don't know how to get district numbers in the two split counties, Carter and Nelson.

Unfortunately the district isn't just split across counties but even across precincts  (why the evil Republican legislature did this to us I have no idea), but I added up the non-split precinct totals with my estimate for the split precincts and got roughly 535 Yes - 366 No votes in the part of Carter County in the 4th district and 4,437 Yes - 4,271 No votes in the Nelson County partial. So when added to the rest of the district, the margin gets slightly closer but still +3 points for No.

What I think is also interesting is the state supreme court race centered in largely the same district (minus the more eastern counties and Spencer + Nelson County). Here, the margin for No was +5 and the incumbent pro-choice Justice Michelle Keller defeated the Republican state representative who authored the trigger ban law--the one which is being challenged in the Kentucky Supreme Court right now--by ten points.

[ReallySuper]

precinct map bc why not

not especially surprising--obvious urban-rural divide is obvious, who would've guessed (with generally republican but socially liberal suburbs voting no along with urban areas). the glaring central ky vs. the rest of the state divide is interesting though: every precinct in franklin, woodford, fayette, bourbon and nicholas counties voted no. even rowan county, somehow

Is there any way I can find the precinct margins on this site?

unfortunately not. to find precinct margins you have to go to the secretary of state website where the results are by county and then click on the "precinct results" to see them for each race. (eventually there should be an official spreadsheet for each county with all the precinct results). and then to match them with the precincts on the map you would have to match the code with the names which you can find in this spreadsheet.