Democrats are celebrating retaining their majority in the Senate. “Maybe the Republican Party, which has been so negative on so many different issues, will realize that the election was a clarion call by the American people: Stop all this negativity, stop flirting with autocracy, stop spending your time denying the election, and work to get something done,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
Many people believe that their loss has, in part, to do with abortion. On June 24, 2022, the supreme court overturned Roe V. Wade, creating a political shift in the United States. Roe v. Wade was a major legal decision on January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court overturned a Texas state law prohibiting abortion, essentially legalizing the practice throughout the United States. The court determined that a woman's right to an abortion was implied in the right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before Roe v. Wade, abortion had been outlawed in much of the country since the late 1800s.
The majority opinion of the overturn, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. They are all appointed by Republican presidents with three of them appointed by former president Donald Trump. More than 59 percent of Americans, including 67 percent of women, opposed the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 decision, according to a CBS News/YouGov response poll, and 52 percent thought the decision was a step backward for the nation.
In August 2022, the predominantly conservative Kansas voted to protect abortion rights by 18 percentage points. This comes as a major surprise because, in the 2016 Kansas election, Donald Trump won by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016 and by 15 in 2020. Donald Trump won the 2016 election in part thanks to his pledge during the campaign to pick Supreme Court justices who were against abortion rights.
“What happened in red Kansas…is a reflection of what is happening across the country and what will continue to occur through the November elections,” Senator Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor, the day after Kansas voted to protect abortion. “If it’s going to happen in Kansas, it’s going to happen in a whole lot of states.” The strong abortion rights vote in Kansas, he said, will continue into the November elections. He was correct. However, he continued by saying “Republicans who side with these extremist policies that attack women’s rights do so at their own political risk.”
With Trump supporters who believed the 2020 election was stolen not voting, thinking the election was going to be stolen no matter what, and many republicans voting Democrat because of such extremist views, Democrats were bound to win. According to 1,600 pages of papers obtained by Reuters, the Maricopa County elections office logged at least 140 threatening and hostile communications directed at election workers between July 11 and August 11 this year. Many of the threats made against workers in one of Arizona's most politically competitive counties were inspired by conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, which were promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies. According to Reuters, several of the emails and social media posts alleged unsubstantiated accusations of fake ballots, fixed voting machines, and corruption among county election officials during the last election. “You will be executed,” read one of the threats.
Maricopa County's recorder, Stephen Richer, told Reuters in an interview that temporary election workers had quit after being harassed outside the main ballot-counting center. According to Richer's communication to county officials, one temporary employee burst into tears after a stranger photographed her. The unidentified employee left work early and did not return. She told Richer that she was not a political person. She was only looking for work.
Extremist Republican candidates, especially those believing the election deniers, could be the reason Republicans lost the senate. Election deniers have continuously proven to be threats to our country and people have recognized that. Many times, Republicans and Democrats share the views on Abortion. With many candidates not supporting abortion, Republicans felt compelled to vote Democrat.