How a $500 Million Gamble by Kamala Harris and the Democrats Cost Them the 2024 Election

For Kamala Harris and the Democrats, it was a $500 million losing bet.

They believed that the threat Donald Trump posed to abortion rights was worth the enormous expenditure on a nationwide campaign of TV, streaming and social media ads and warnings.

But based on Tuesday’s results, the half-billion-dollar gamble now appears to be money out the window.

Americans delivered decisive victories to Trump and many Republicans in Congress on Tuesday, despite Democrats’ belief that abortion would be the galvanizing issue for people going to the polls.

Protecting reproductive freedom has been a rallying cry for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

It ended the national right to abortion and returned the issue to the states.

It was one of the top issues in some key states during the 2022 midterm elections and helped Democrats avoid a red wave, but this year it produced very mixed results.

Ultimately, exit polls show this to be the third most important issue, after ‘democracy’ and ‘the economy’, with only 14 percent of respondents calling it the most important issue.

Although Kamala Harris was seen as better at handling the issue and 65 percent of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, this did not translate into votes and victories for Democrats in key races.

The vice president campaigned intensively on the issue across the country. Her vow to protect reproductive freedom received the biggest applause at her events.

She vowed that as president she would sign a bill to protect abortion if Congress passed one and warned that Trump would support a national abortion ban if elected, despite his denials that he would do so.

Although Trump has previously expressed support for a national ban, he claimed he would leave the issue to the states if he were given a second term.

“It’s very clear that Donald Trump has tried to muddy his message on abortion and that he hasn’t faced the same branding issue on that issue that other Republicans have in the past,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne.

“Voters don’t trust Republicans and don’t like the abortion period,” Payne said. “Furthermore, voters have proven that they will still vote for Republicans despite this.”

There were several instances where this fully played out on Tuesday.

Donald Trump officially flipped Arizona on Saturday to defeat all seven swing states in the 2024 presidential election.

Arizona voters also passed an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution with more than 60 percent support.

Arizona was one of ten states where abortion rights were directly discussed on Tuesday.

In seven of 10 of these states, voters chose to protect abortion rights, indicating that large portions of voters support abortion access in general.

Even in deep red states like Missouri and Montana, where Trump and the Republicans won, voters took action to protect abortion rights. The ballot measure in Missouri passed with more than 51 percent support. In Montana, a ballot initiative received more than 57 percent.

Even in Florida, where the abortion protection amendment fell short of the state’s necessary 60 percent threshold, some 57 percent of voters supported it while still electing Trump by double digits (56 percent).

Some strategists have since suggested that ballot initiatives might even have given voters a consent structure to feel comfortable voting for Republicans who might oppose abortion access because they could also vote directly on the issue.

Anti-abortion activists saw it differently. They argued that Democrats’ fear-mongering on this issue didn’t work very well because it wasn’t the galvanizing issue Democrats thought it was.

“This election proves that abortion was not the panacea Democrats thought it would be,” said Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser.

“Even after Democrats poured half a billion dollars into abortion TV ads in this election, they still lost the presidency, the Senate and possibly the House of Representatives,” she said. ‘The reason? Their extreme abortion agenda is out of step with the Americans.’

She claimed that “most Americans support early, reasonable limits on abortion.”

But even as voters chose to protect abortion rights with ballot measures in seven of 10 states this cycle and in multiple elections since Roe fell, advocates are sounding the alarm about the incoming Trump administration.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has warned that the Trump White House could take action to block the shipment of abortion pills, making it harder to access even in states where abortion is legal.

The group pledged to fight any attempt to pass a national abortion ban and attempts to prevent women from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.

“We will scrutinize every action by the White House and federal agencies, gather the factual and legal evidence to counter agency actions, and work to prevent harmful policies from taking effect,” said President and CEO Nancy Northup.

“If they do, we will take them to court,” she added.