Supporters and organizers of Amendment 3, an abortion rights measure, celebrate the election results at a viewing party at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Missouri on November 5, 2024. Credit – Dominick Williams—The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/ Getty Images

Ain seven of the 10 states that voted on reproductive rights it passed voting measures to protect access, country RE-ELECTED former President Donald Trump — a man who has credit requested for the US Supreme Court’s decision to a overthrow Roe v. Wade two years ago. Trump saw victory in four states that have passed protections, highlighting what some experts call a “cognitive dissonance” about how people feel about abortion and the candidates they choose to elect.

Arizona, Missouri and Montana will amend their state constitutions to enshrine the right to abortion up to the viability of the fetus (which is around 24 weeks of pregnancy), with exceptions thereafter if the life or health of the pregnant woman is in danger. Nevada voters also supported a similar measure, but will have to pass it again in 2026 to formally amend the state constitution.

And yet Trump won nearly 59 percent of the vote in both Missouri and Montana and about 52 percent of the vote in Arizona, according to Associated Press. Nationally, about 38 percent of Trump voters in the 2024 election also said they believe abortion should be legal in all or most situations, according to a AP VoteCast poll.

Deirdre Schifeling, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says the results point to a “cognitive dissonance” on the issue. “There’s a disconnect between voter actions,” Schifeling says. “I think it will be a minute before we have a satisfactory answer as to how these two contradictory things could possibly be true.”

For Arizona and Missouri, recently passed amendments are expected to roll back existing restrictions on abortion — Arizona currently bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and Missouri has an almost total ban. Montana already allows abortion up to fetal viability, but supporters said the measure would prevent state lawmakers from trying to restrict access in the future, which they have. tried to do in recent years. The measures passed with nearly 62 percent, 52 percent and 58 percent of the vote in Arizona, Missouri and Montana, respectively, according to A?.

Political and reproductive rights experts have several theories to explain why voters in these three states supported abortion access while supporting a candidate who applauded the decision of the Supreme Court which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. Many point out that the 2024 election results indicate something Americans already knew: There is broad support for abortion rights in the country across political party lines. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most situations, according to 2024 data from Pew Research Center.

But for some voters, it’s a matter of priorities.

“When you give voters a chance to vote directly on this issue, you see a runway of overwhelming support for reproductive rights across the country,” Schifeling says. “However, candidate races are never just about one thing, and that was certainly true this year.”

Problems like the economy and immigration came up as two of the main concerns of voters this election cycle, followed by abortion. Rachel Janfaza, a youth political analyst who has conducted listening sessions with youth in various states since 2022, says she has spoken to several young people in Arizona who were undecided voters who supported abortion rights but prioritized issues like the cost of living . “I think a lot of these young people are pro-choice, and I think it’s up to a woman what she does with her own body,” Janfaza says. “I think for them it wasn’t as motivating an issue in their voting calculus as the economy or immigration was.”

Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, says Arizona is “a unique state in the variation it expresses ideologically in elections.” Trump won Arizona, but in the state’s US Senate race is Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego currently driving Republican Kari Lake (AP has hasn’t been called yet race). In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden won the state. “Obviously, the Democrats were hoping that abortion would give them more momentum, but it’s a really tough battle in Arizona,” Klar says. At the same time, many Arizonans, including Republicans, support abortion rights. Some voters may have separated this issue from their presidential choice. “By putting abortion on the ballot, it allows pro-choice Republicans to both support a Republican candidate and also support reproductive rights, so you don’t have to channel your support for reproductive rights through a presidential candidate; you can keep them as two separate problems,” says Klar.

Klar says she believes the Republican Party and Trump campaign’s messages about abortion have reached some Arizona voters. While Trump has, in the past, indicator support for national restrictions, he has tried to soften that position this election cycle and said that the decision be left to the states. “I think that resonates with Republicans who are saying, ‘Okay, we know this is going to be state’s rights. As an Arizonan, I want legal abortion in my state, and I will vote for Trump for any reason, whether it’s conservative social policies, economic policies — whatever the reason is,” says Klar.

Jamille Fields Allsbrook, assistant professor of law at Saint Louis University, offered similar explanations for the Missouri results. She says voters may not believe Trump poses a threat to abortion access. “Donald Trump, famous back in 2016 … said he would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Spawn, and that’s exactly what happened,” says Fields Allsbrook. “But for whatever reason, voters didn’t feel that he was really ideologically opposed to abortion. And part of that has to do with the way he’s presented himself now.”

Fields Allsbrook also says that some voters may believe that because they had the ability in their state to protect access to abortion through the ballot initiative, abortion rights would be protected. (Any national restrictions on abortion would supersede state constitutional protections.)

Montana has been a state that has generally been drifting to the right for years, according to Sara Rushing, a political science professor at Montana State University Bozeman. Many people in states like California and Washington have moved in Montana over the past few years, some of whom may be more right-leaning but also value their abortion rights, which are protected in their home states, Rushing says. She adds that Montana’s ballot measure did not change existing laws the way similar initiatives in other states did because the Montana Supreme Court pent-up in 1999, that the state constitution protected the right to abortion, so people would be more inclined to vote for it.

Rushing echoed some of the possible explanations other pundits have proposed — that Trump has walked back his earlier comments on abortion and insisted the issue should be left up to states that resonated with voters in Montana. “I think he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth, which leaves people able to quote him what they want,” Rushing says of Trump’s position on abortion.

And she says getting the issue on the ballot may allow voters to separate abortion from Trump as a candidate: “You can have your cake and eat it too.”

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