Ohio Ballot Issue 1 Megathread (August 8)

[Badger]

No by more than 60% for sure, and plausibly more than 70%. The No campaign is far more active than the Yes campaign and efforts to make it harder to pass referendums basically always go down in flames with more than 60% opposed.

This very issue was on the ballot in Arkansas last November and lost by nearly 20 points. I don’t see any way this will even come close.

In addition to this, we had somewhat similar issues rejected by SD voters in 2022 by 67-33, ND voters 62-38 in 2020, AR 56-44 in 2020, and SD again by 54-46 in 2018.

Yeah, and my understanding is that at least in South Dakota the 'Yes' effort actually campaigned, which it basically isn't doing in Ohio.

I wish I was as optimistic - or perhaps pessimistic? - as you that issue one will fail that hard. I believe it will fail, by probably at least close to 10 points, and it wouldn't shock me if the no vote was closer to 60% than 50%.

 I was unaware of these prior referendums in other more conservative states where a similar ballot measure went down in flames. I will say that I think the vote Yes campaign has been very active and, although notably outspent as demonstrated in the post above, they've hardly been sleeping as well.

The Republican Party State organization, notwithstanding some has beens like kasich, taft, and the recently stepped down chief justice, are all totally in the tank to pass this measure. Even beyond the abortion rights and likely marijuana legalization referendums in november, they are more concerned about a redistricting Amendment with teeth being passed and de-Wisconsining our horrendously gerrymandered legislative and Congressional Maps. Also don't underestimate the impact of their having very specifically chosen an early August election- after passing a law prohibiting future August elections, and then turning around and scheduling this one for August and having the four to three Republican majority on the state supreme court say that's a okay -- in order to decrease turnout.

I accidentally voted that yes would get greater than 50% of out, but I think no will do so of course. It would not Shock Me, though I would be pleasantly surprised, if the no vote topped 60%.

[Badger]

Yes wins, but I'm not sure what the margin will be.

I would be interested in your opinion as to why as you are one of the few individuals believing it will pass. Any thoughts?

[Badger]

Surprised this thread isn't livelier, unless Issue 1 is being followed somewhere else on here.  Anyway, any input from locals on how this is looking?  Since the ONU poll which had it tied (albeit with 20% undecided), has there been any other polling? Anecdotally people are saying that it's tightened noticeably, but you know how anecdotes go.

I really, really hope this goes down hard.  I don't care much about abortion one way or another, but that sort of blatant power grab is pathetic, not to mention how much harder it would be to get anything decent passed there.

Anecdotally, there's a lot of yes signs popping up. Plus they are prevalent in rural conservative communities as one would expect. This is anecdotal from anti-issue one Facebook threads I have lurked on, but still someone concerning.

I think posters point that on referendums no is the default choice for most voters, and thus we've got a decent chance of a large chunk of those undecided voters going in our favor.

[Badger]

This is a good night for people who support democracy.

[Badger]

Not Holmes county voting yes... I'm renouncing them

It's like it's the most Republican county in the whole state and also full of super-anti-abortion Amish people.

Holmes County voting the way it did isn't a surprise, but at the risk of nitpicking, voting is actually frowned upon in the Amish community and only a single-digit percentage of them does. Holmes is a rural Republican county like any other in the Midwest, only this one happens to contain a lot of Amish (~6,000 total votes cast in a county of >44,000 people).

Great night for democracy.

This is all true, but Amish attitudes toward voting have started to slowly shift lately, and the Trump campaign in 2020 made a big push to get more of them to vote in Pennsylvania in particular.

Oh hell. I remember when bushes re-election campaign in 2004 made a serious push for Ohio Amish voters to get to the polls. I remember some of them being interviewed in newspaper articles where their attitude was essentially " yes, we are pacifists and consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be violations of our Creed -BUT ABORTION AND SODOMITES MARRYING ARE AN ABOMINATION BEFORE THE LORD!!"

[Badger]

Good.

Now on to November.

Do you think OHio voters will back abortion rights by a higher margin than MIchigan voters last year? The polls would suggest yes, but I am not sure. I think it will end up with 55-60% support, give or take.

It'll likely pass but fall a few percentage points short of the margin of victory in michigan. The vote totals for issue 1 closely mirrored the abortion rights referendum in Michigan at about a 5743 split. However, there were at least a tangible number of pro-life voters who were willing and able to separate issue one from the November abortion referendum and weren't willing to accept such a scale back voters power to exercise direct democracy. They were obviously a relatively small minority of pro-life voters on issue 1, but they will count for at least a few percentage points in november, whereas pro-choice people who voted yes on issue 1 are almost non-existent.
My initial gut reaction being made far too well in advance to be taken seriously is that the abortion referendum passes with around 54 or 55%.

[Badger]

The one downside to issue one getting so badly clobbered is that it has likely tarnished prospects of Larose winning the primary, as he would be an easier candidate to defeat than Matt Dolan

[Badger]

... is Ohio going to count any more ballots? It's been over a week and I thought there was something like tens of thousands of possible late mail ballots to count?

No, because some states are actually good at administering elections and don’t put themselves into a situation where there are thousands of ballots left to count over a week after Election Day.

If that's a critique, I'll simply say that it's far far more important permit those tens of thousands of individuals every opportunity to have their voices heard at The Ballot Box rather than provide quick results for the benefit of election nerds.