Will Missourians back abortion rights amendment? New poll shows voters’ uncertainty

As Missouri abortion rights groups mount a campaign to overturn the state’s ban on abortion, new polling suggests that the petition does not currently have the required majority support to pass on the ballot.

But proponents of the measure still have significant time to boost support and past polling indicates that a majority of Missourians are in favor of some form of abortion access.

The poll, released Wednesday by Saint Louis University and British pollster YouGov, found that a plurality of 44% of those surveyed supported the proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the ban while 37% disagreed. The remaining 19% said they were not sure, a percentage of voters that abortion rights supporters will have to tap into.

The proposed constitutional amendment, if it were to reach the ballot, would require support from more than 50% of votes cast to pass.

The survey of 900 likely Missouri voters was conducted between Feb. 14 and Feb. 26. It has a margin of error of 3.74%. The poll also asked voters to weigh in on a host of other issues, including results that suggest Missourians generally favor the death penalty and which candidates voters would support in the upcoming race for Missouri governor.

Steve Rogers, an associate professor of political science at Saint Louis University who directed the poll, said that he expects the proposed constitutional amendment would pass in a general election. But he said that support could hinge on informing voters about what the measure would do.

“There’s going to need to be a little bit of education going on about what this constitutional amendment is about,” he said.

Rogers pointed to the significant percentage of voters who said they were unsure about the proposal — voters he said he was confident have opinions on abortion. Unlike the poll, voters will be unable to select a “not sure” option if the measure reaches the ballot.

“There are people out there that do have opinions about abortion…generally those opinions are more favorable towards legalizing abortion. But the constitutional amendment language may be a little more dense,” Rogers said.

The campaign called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom is currently seeking to gather roughly 171,000 signatures by May 5 to get the measure to a statewide vote either in November or at an earlier election if called by Republican Gov. Mike Parson.

The proposed constitutional amendment would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution but also give lawmakers leeway to regulate the procedure after fetal viability.

The measure defines fetal viability as “the point in pregnancy when, in the good faith judgment of a treating health professional and based on the particular facts of the case, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

Thursday’s poll appears to be the first public survey that analyzed Missouri voters’ support of the exact wording of the proposed constitutional amendment. Supporters of the procedure have consistently pointed to general support for abortion rights statewide.

Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, told The Star at the beginning of this year’s legislative session that it’s important for the campaign to focus on the people who have been harmed by the state’s ban on abortion.

“It’s fundamentally about rights,” she said. “Daughters and granddaughters have fewer rights under this Missouri government than they did a couple of years ago.”

Some opponents of the procedure have over the past several months acknowledged voter support for abortion rights and Missouri Republicans have embarked on a plan to curb direct democracy by raising the threshold for constitutional amendments to pass on the ballot in an attempt to block the proposal.

Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, said before the poll was released that he didn’t think the abortion rights petition would reach the ballot. He also touted the Republican-led effort to make it harder for voters to amend the state constitution.

“Missouri is gonna stay a pro-life state,” he said. “And we’re gonna work very hard to keep it that way.”

The poll results found that support for the measure was largely split among party lines.

For Democratic voters, 71% supported the measure while 11% disagreed. The remaining 19% were unsure. And 24% of Republican voters supported the amendment while 56% were against it and 20% were unsure.

The results come as women and medical providers across the state have grappled with — and criticized — the state’s ban on abortion, which was triggered after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to the procedure in 2022.

Shortly after the ban went into effect, SLU and YouGov released polling that showed a majority of Missourians support some level of legal abortion and disagreed with the state’s abortion ban.

The 2022 poll found that 58% of those surveyed supported a woman’s right to an abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy compared to 32% who disagreed. It also showed that 75% of respondents agreed that a women should be able to get an abortion in a cases of rape and 79% supported abortions in cases of incest.

Missouri’s abortion ban does not include exceptions for rape or incest. Only a single exception, for medical emergencies, was included. The 2022 poll results also showed that a plurality of 48% would support a ballot initiative to reverse the ban.

Republicans expected to keep governor’s office

Wednesday’s poll also analyzed Missouri voters’ thoughts on the upcoming race for governor, indicating that Republicans are expected to hold onto the office this year as the state has grown staunchly Republican.

The poll found that 52% of those surveyed would vote for a Republican candidate for governor while 38% would vote for a Democratic candidate. Only 8% said they were not sure.

Of the Republican candidates for governor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft was leading in the poll with 18% of respondents saying they would most likely support his campaign. Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe was second in the poll with 8% followed by Sen. Bill Eigel with 5%. But a majority of respondents, 52%, said they were still not sure.

The poll also dove deeper into the results, specifically asking the 414 voters who said they would support a Republican candidate which candidate they would support. Those results showed Ashcroft still in the lead with 28% support followed by Kehoe with 10% and Eigel with 8%.

On the other side of the political aisle, the poll showed House Minority Leader Crystal Quade leading in the Democratic primary for governor with 8% of voters saying they would support her campaign. Of the voters who said they would vote for the Democratic candidate, Quade had broader support with 21% of respondents saying they would support her campaign.

While Democrats are a longshot to take the governor’s office, Quade’s campaign could receive a boost if the abortion amendment is placed on the same ballot, Rogers said.

“Missouri is a red state, but there’s a lot of pro-choice voters out there so that can help Crystal Quade,” he said. “Can that help her overcome like a 14% deficit? That’d be impressive. But we have seen many impressive things in politics in the last 10, 20 years.”

The next two Democratic candidates who received support in the poll were Springfield businessman Mike Hamra, who has not yet filed for governor, and Rep. Sarah Unsicker, whose filing fee was rejected by the Missouri Democratic Party after she was ousted from the House Democratic caucus over her affiliation with a man decried as a Holocaust denier.

Missourians thoughts on the death penalty

The poll showed that Missourians generally favor the use of the death penalty, but support for capital punishment drops off when a jury does not unanimously agree to a death sentence.

Sixty-five percent of men and 60% of women favor death penalty sentences in cases of first-degree murder. The poll also found:

• Support varied more widely by race: 63% of white people support the death penalty while support among Black people was at 51%.

• Thirty-seven percent of the Democrats surveyed favored the death penalty while 86% of Republicans and 58% of Independence voiced support for it.

• Education levels factored in strongly. Seventy-two percent of people with a high school education or less support the death penalty. That rate dropped to 64% for those with some college, 58% for those with a four-year degree and 44% for those with a graduate degree.

Missouri is one of three states along with Florida and Indiana that allow a judge to impose the death penalty. Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said they favored that system, while 35% opposed it and 16% were unsure. The majority of people — 52% — support allowing the governor to change a capital sentence to life without parole.

According to a Gallup poll released in November, a majority of Americans now believe the death penalty is applied unfairly. Fifty-three percent said they still support the death penalty, down from 60% a decade ago.

Two lethal injections are scheduled in Missouri so far this year: Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed April 9 and David Russell Hosier is scheduled for June 11.