Abortion Tipped the Scale in 2023 U.S. Elections: Where Do Latinos Stand on the Issue?

Democrats secured significant victories in Tuesday's 2023 elections. In most of them, abortion rights played a key role to tip the scales one way or another. And Latinos may have contributed to it.

In Ohio, abortion was literally the issue on the ballot: there, voters passed an initiative that enshrined abortion rights in the state's constitution. In other states, candidates' stance or promises related to the issue were also at the centerstage at the time of going to the ballot box.

In Virginia, republican governor Glenn Youngkin centered his campaign around enacting new abortion restrictions should the party retake he state Senate. Concretely, he wanted to pass a 15-week "limit" on these procedures.

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic state Supreme Court expanded Biden's margin of victory in 2020 and won a race in which abortion rights were under the spotlight. In Kentucky, governor Andy Beshear won reelection for the Democrats in a predominantly Republican state at a national level.

Beshear also took a strong stance against the state's current laws on abortion, which ban it in most cases, including rape and incest. Kentucky strengthened its restrictions on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned landmark case Roe V. Wade in June 2022, which protected abortion at a federal level.

While most of the states who held elections on Tuesday have relatively low Latino populations (Ohio with 4.5 percent, Kentucky with 4.3 percent and Virginia 10.5 percent) different surveys show that most members of this demographic favor abortion being legal.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center in 2022, a majority of Hispanics (57%) say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, a slightly smaller share than among the U.S. public overall (62%). Four-in-ten Hispanics say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.

However, and same as it happens with other demographics, views diverged significantly depending on party affiliation: "About two-thirds of Hispanic Democrats (68%) say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. By contrast, about six-in-ten Hispanic Republicans (62%) say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. Hispanic independents and those who do not identify as partisans have more evenly divided views."

And even if in this case Latinos may not have played a major role in he results, they might in future elections if the issue remains in the ballots. According to Axios, groups in Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Colorado and South Dakota are all in the process of doing so for next year's elections. And there, the demographic picture is different: the first one has a 30.7 Latino population, the second one 26.5 percent, the third one 28.7 percent and the fourth one 21.9 percent, so advocates are likely to intensify efforts to have abortion traction the Democratic party as the presidential elections get closer.