Josh Hawley and Abortion-Rights Advocates Both Get Good News in Missouri

Missouri voters are poised to reelect an outspoken anti-abortion advocate and legalize the procedure on the same ballot in November.

A St. Louis University/YouGov poll released Thursday offered good news to both Republican Senator Josh Hawley and abortion-rights activists. More than half of respondents, 52 percent, said they would support a proposal to enshrine the right to abortion up until the point of fetal viability in Missouri’s constitution.

Although Democrats were hoping abortion proposals on the ballot would give them a boost in statewide races, the new survey suggests that it will do little to move the needle. The majority of voters supported every one of the Republican candidates by more than double digits, including Hawley, who was up 11 points over his Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce. Kunce is also the best-funded Missouri Democrat running for statewide office.

Hawley, who has an A+ rating from the nonprofit Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has consistently opposed legislation protecting reproductive rights. In 2022, he helped Senate Republicans block a Democratic bill that would protect the rights of women to travel to other states to access legal abortion care.

In addition, Hawley is married to Erin Hawley, the lawyer who successfully argued the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case before the Supreme Court two years ago. The Dobbs decision was a landmark ruling that overturned the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade nearly 50 years earlier.

The decision has also shown that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, who were able to stave off a GOP red wave in the 2022 midterms because of Dobbs. Every abortion-related referendum that has been put on the ballot since Dobbs has reaffirmed widespread support for reproductive rights.

The new poll found that only 34 percent of voters oppose the abortion-rights proposition in Missouri. Fourteen percent said they were unsure about the issue.

At the same time, Hawley leads Kunce, with 53 percent support to the Democrat’s 42 percent.

“We have some pretty restrictive abortion laws within the state, and so, even though we are a very Republican state, it doesn’t mean that the voters are uniform in their opinion,” poll director Steven Rogers told Newsweek. “Our previous polling showed that there were a fair number of Republicans out there who were already kind of more sympathetic to having some more lenient abortion laws.”

Rogers said there has been an increase in support for both Hawley and legalizing abortion. The new poll shows Hawley in the best position since pollsters began surveying respondents in June 2020, when he saw 48 percent approval. As of this month, his approval rating is 53 percent.

Thursday’s survey also shows an 8-point bump in support for the abortion proposal since February. Earlier this year, 44 percent of voters said they supported the amendment, while 37 percent opposed it and 19 percent said they were unsure. The majority of all voters—60 percent of Democratic, Republican and independent voters—supported abortion in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is endangered.

“The abortion petition, it’ll be a huge driver to get out to vote people who want to take that power back,” Kunce told Newsweek in an exclusive interview earlier this month.

“We’re going to basically be the top of the ticket in this state, my Senate race and that abortion petition,” he said. “I’m really excited to be really leading the charge for Missourians on taking power back from these guys so that we can just live our own lives.”

Democrats are banking heavily on voter support for November’s ballot measures, which also include a proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage. But Rogers said it would be wise to “temper expectations.” Because this year’s elections include a presidential race, they are likely to drive high voter turnout.

“This is going to be the one where these amendments are probably going to have the least amount of impact,” Rogers said. “If this were a midterm election or even an off-year primary election, that is where these amendments could really shift something.”

He said he’d be “very surprised” if any Democrat running for statewide office won this year. If that happens, it would be the first victory for Democrats at that level since 2018.

The poll was conducted among 900 voters between August 8 and 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.79 percentage points.