Arizona’s Abortion Access Measure Is More Bad News for Trump

Arizona for Abortion Access announced Monday that its referendum initiative has qualified for the November election. That was the result of a massive grassroots effort: Over the past few months, the coalition mobilized thousands of volunteers to collect more than 577,000 signatures, hundreds of thousands more than needed, to put its initiative on the ballot.

Proposition 139 seeks to amend the Arizona State Constitution to ensure that abortion access cannot be restricted by the Legislature or the courts. It is the latest in a series of abortion ballot measures across the country to qualify for the general election this fall.

Missouri also qualified this week, and five other states (Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Maryland, and South Dakota) have already seen qualified ballots for the November election. Abortion access advocates in Montana and Nebraska are still waiting to see if their initiatives will qualify.

None of this is good news for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his MAGA campaign.

Last spring, the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated the 1864 abortion ban. Although it later stayed the law’s enforcement, and although a handful of brave GOP members of the Assembly and senators quickly joined Democrats in overturning that law and replacing it with a 15-week ban, the court’s ruling put the issue front and center for voters, reminding them that when it comes to protecting fundamental rights in the post-Roe deer was, there is no room for complacency.

This is a losing vote for the GOP, and party strategists know it. That’s why they’ve tried so desperately to shift public attention to other issues, whether by downplaying the issue’s importance in the party platform or barely saying the word at the Republican National Convention. But even as GOP leaders try to distract voters with issues like immigration, the economy, crime, or pretty much anything but abortion, reproductive rights haven’t disappeared from voters’ minds. After the court ruling, the signature drive accelerated, with huge numbers of voters signing Arizona for Abortion Access’s petition every day to put Proposition 139 on the ballot and write abortion access protections into the state constitution.

“Our signature drive shows the broad support and popularity of protecting abortion access, and we expect that enthusiasm to continue on Election Day,” Dawn Penich, a spokeswoman for the coalition, told me earlier this week. “It’s clear that the desire to protect bodily autonomy and ensure the privacy of personal medical decisions cuts across party lines. Voters are coming at this issue from different angles—sometimes women’s rights, other times limited government—but the belief that all people should be able to navigate their health care options with their doctors and families, without politicians and judges making the decisions, is deeply bipartisan.”

A CBS poll conducted in May of this year found that two-thirds of Arizona voters wanted abortion to be legal in all or most cases, and more than half said abortion was an important factor for them in this year’s election.

Throughout 2023 and the first half of 2024, Trump has built a strong position in Arizona against an increasingly ineffective President Biden. Had the election been held this spring, the MAGA candidate would almost certainly have won the state. Nearly a month after Biden ended his reelection bid, however, it’s a different story in the Grand Canyon State. The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has been clawing back ground lost to Biden. The Democratic nominee is now leading Trump in the state by a narrow margin, according to many recent polls. She’s also starting to gain the upper hand in neighboring Nevada.

That shouldn’t be a big surprise. In both states, solid majorities of voters support abortion access, and in both states, national elections have trended blue in recent cycles. Trump’s lead in those states has always been due more to apathy or anger over the candidacy of the 80-year-old Biden than to a sudden surge in support for the policies and worldview Trump promotes. In my reporting in Nevada and Arizona earlier this year, I interviewed numerous voters who seemed to long for a younger, more energetic Democratic candidate. They talked about not turning out for election; some of the young people I interviewed even said they hated both candidates but would probably vote for Trump simply because he was more fun. That calculus has changed completely, in a matter of weeks. Now, Trump is the stale candidate and Harris is the agent of change, bringing out the big crowds and bringing in donations and volunteers for the campaign.

A recent poll in the state by HighGround put Harris two points ahead of Trump, a huge swing over the MAGA candidate since Biden announced he would not run again. Bloomberg and several other polling firms also put Harris ahead. And while last week’s Trafalgar Group poll found Trump holding a small lead in Arizona in recent weeks, that poll was sponsored by the GOP and should be taken with at least a pinch of salt. In polls with Kennedy considered as a candidate, the same reversal is occurring; a state that seemed a sure thing for Trump less than a month ago is now struggling.

“Part of what we’re seeing in Harris’s numbers,” explained HighGround’s Paul Bentz, “is growing enthusiasm among younger voters who weren’t thrilled with a matchup between two 70-year-olds. Combined with the qualification of the abortion-access bill, we could see younger voters show up and boost turnout to near-record 2020 levels. Republicans would prefer a lower turnout where their reliable voters have more influence.”

Of course, there are still more than 10 weeks to go until the election, and it’s possible Trump could make up lost ground. Not to mention that the GOP hasn’t completely failed in its attempts to undermine the ballot initiative; a related pamphlet being distributed to voters will include anti-abortion language that identifies a fetus as an “unborn human being,” which, Arizona for Abortion Access explained, introduces bias where voters deserve neutral, factual information.

However, it is clear that momentum is now on Harris’ side, and recent news that Proposition 139 is eligible for the ballot is ultimately a positive for Democrats as they seek to maximize voter turnout and identify issues that will propel their supporters to the polls.