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On a Friday night in late October, a vision in a black pantsuit took the stage in downtown Houston and offered her support to Vice President Kamala Harris. Beyoncé didn’t endorse Harris as a musician, an influencer, a Democrat, or even the most famous daughter in Texas.

She argued as a mother — “a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all our children live in,” she said. “A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”

The rally, where Texas OB/GYNs and women denied medically necessary abortions shared the stage with Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, was the culmination of a national presidential campaign focused on abortion access , women’s health and reproductive choice after Roe v. Wade is overturned in 2022. Texas, where abortion has been more restricted than any other state, was “ground zero” for the issue, Harris told a crowd of 20,000 fans who he screams.

Ten days later, Republicans defeated Democrats in Texas and across the nation. President Donald Trump easily won the state by 14 points, increasing his support in nearly every demographic group, including women, exit polls show. Sen. Ted Cruz beat Colin Allred by 9 points. Down the ballot, Republicans swept Texas Supreme Court races that Democrats tried to frame as the state’s best chance at an abortion referendum.

It was a devastating loss for Democrats who thought this was “Roevember,” where they would see a wave of voter registration, increased voter turnout and silent defections from women who previously supported Trump. More than 70% of Texans want more exceptions to the state’s abortion laws, including for rape, incest and birth defects, polls show.

But wanting the laws to be different doesn’t mean people will automatically vote for the party they see as less responsible for creating them, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

“There was no indication that abortion was going to be the motivating issue that Democrats thought it would be,” he said. “I think the big question to ask is why, based on the available data, did the campaigns assume that something would happen that would get all that data wrong.”

Home economics

In Texas, women split almost exactly down the middle for Trump and Harris, exit polls show, a slight shift to the right from previous presidential elections. While this broadly reflects the Republican victory over many demographic groups, it also shows that Democrats have failed to mobilize independent and undecided voters who they hoped would be outraged by abortion bans, Henson said.

Texas voters may disagree with abortion laws, but they continue to prioritize economic issues, polls have consistently shown in recent years. Just a month before the election, both men and women said their biggest concern was the economy, followed by immigration and inflation. Only about 10 percent of women said abortion was the most important issue, along with 2 percent of men.

It’s rare for a “social issue” to trump an economic one, said Laura Merrifield Wilson, a political science professor at the University of Indianapolis who studies gender issues in politics.

“When things are going well, then people are concerned about social issues and reproductive health and issues of bodily autonomy and government regulation,” she said. “When people feel like the price of eggs has become too expensive and they’re not sure about the future of gas costs, then they care less about some of those other social issues.”

Republicans ran hard on the economy, tying Harris to Biden’s low approval numbers and stoking recession fears. Democrats, meanwhile, have failed to connect Trump to the state’s new abortion laws. While Trump bragged about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who ruled with a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to set their own abortion laws, he muddied the waters by also saying , that he will not sign a national abortion ban.

“Trump and Cruz and all of them campaigned on ‘we’re not going to do anything, so don’t worry,'” Zeigler said.

That left Democrats responsible for the messaging they feared Republicans would do to further limit abortion, as well as what they themselves promised to do to expand access. Nor is it an easy path, requiring Democrats to explain complicated legal theories like the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Work Act and Comstock Acta long-standing law from the 1800s that prohibits the mailing of abortion-related articles.

Many voters may have thought, “I don’t think the federal government can do anything about abortion, and I think the federal government can do something about inflation,” Zeigler said.

“It’s not choosing between two things I really care about, it’s choosing between something that won’t matter and something that does.”

This was highlighted in states like Arizona, Missouri and Montana, where voters overwhelmingly supported ballot measures to protect access to abortion while voting for Trump and Republicans. In Amarillo, voters deeply rejected an anti-abortion “travel ban,” even though the counties where the city is located overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

“Voters say they support abortion rights, but they’re just not concerned about Trump and Republicans in Congress,” Zeigler said. “Essentially, ‘I can have my position on abortion rights and I can have Republicans,’ and I don’t think Harris or Biden have done a particularly good job of explaining why that might not be true.”

In August, Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died from an infection after doctors delayed treating her pregnancy loss, spoke from the stage of the Democratic National Convention about the impact of Texas’ abortion laws. Texas women have featured similar stories in ads and campaign stops for Democratic candidates.

Despite these devastating stories, it’s still hard to get voters to understand that this could happen to them, said Wendy Davis, a former state senator and gubernatorial candidate who now works with Planned Parenthood Texas Votes.

“Especially for a lot of low-information voters, what they felt in their day-to-day lives, the kitchen table, the problems in their pockets is what really resonated with them,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s a fair narrative to say it was a mistake for Democrats to run on this issue. I think we should have had a both/and situation.”

Henson said there may be a way to frame abortion as an economic issue, focused on getting women into the workforce. But based on Biden’s approval ratings and people’s assessment of the economy, trying to slightly reorient the approach to abortion is like “moving deck chairs to get a better view of the iceberg,” he said.

The state and national Republican measure means Texas abortion laws, at least, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The state does not have a mechanism that allows citizens to directly put a ballot measure before voters, meaning unless the makeup of the Texas Legislature changes, the laws will remain in place as they are.

In 2026, Democrats will likely have more stories of delayed or denied health care in Texas and may be able to more clearly point to the threat Trump poses on the issue, Zeigler said.

How each party’s messaging on abortion will depend largely on what Trump does over the next two years, as well as what happens on the myriad of other issues that voters say motivates them.

“I think the danger for Republicans is that they interpret this as a mandate to take hard positions on abortion when the election wasn’t really about abortion for the majority of voters,” Zeigler said. “And for Democrats, that they’re taking it as a sign that they shouldn’t talk about abortion, which is one of their stronger issues, because it wasn’t enough to overcome their weaker issues.”

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood and the University of Texas at Austin have financially supported The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial backers play no role in Tribune journalism. Find a complete their list here.