Why Missouri voters backed liberal policies but chose conservative leaders

ST. LOUIS - Missouri voters largely backed Republican candidates for President, U.S. Congress and statewide offices in Tuesday's general election while simultaneously approving socially-progressive ballot measures on abortion rights and minimum wage.

These outcomes, according to Missouri's preliminary results, reflect a nuanced approach that emerged for state voters in the Nov. 5, 2024 general election. Conservative candidates prevailed, while voters also approved liberal-leaning policies.

To better understand voting dynamics, FOX 2 spoke with Michael Olson, an assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

In a post-election conversation, Olson explained factors that may have influenced this pattern and that voters supporting a certain policy doesn't always align with the priorities of a candidate they elect to office.

Discussion topic: What stands out most about the results of this general election, both for Missouri and nationally?

"Both in Missouri and nationally, I think the biggest thing is this sort of nearly uniform shift toward Republicans, in particular, President Trump. You can see how the [electoral voting] map of how things change from year to year, and it's basically a solid block of red over the United States. And we see that same pattern here in Missouri for all statewide offices."

Discussion topic: Was there anything in how Missouri voted on its candidates or issues that could be seen as surprising?

"As far as the statewide offices, I'm not sure if there were any huge surprises. If you want to sort of get into the details of the races, you can see some voters making some distinctions between these candidates. [Missouri Governor-Elect Mike] Kehoe seems to have run the best of the candidates statewide, followed by [President-elect Donald] Trump, followed by [Senator-elect Josh] Hawley. There's probably a four-percentage point gap between Hawley and Kehoe, which is consistent with Hawley being more extreme and Kehoe being a more established and moderate type of candidate. And voters are picking up on those distinctions."

Discussion topic: With Missouri voters electing Republican candidates for political offices, while also passing ballot issues such as Amendment 3 and Proposition A, which seemingly oppose some priorities of these elected candidates, what are some reasons the election results may have transpired as they did?

"There's kind of this emerging trend or folk-wisdom that Missourians sort of like liberal policies but don't like Democratic candidates who support them. I think, to some sense, that's demonstratively true. At least the majority seems to like things like Medicaid expansion, and marijuana legalization, and now, increased abortion access. It really doesn't take that many voters quote-on-quote 'splitting their tickets' to produce this type of effect. We're talking about the abortion amendment running 10 percentage points or so ahead of statewide Republican races. That's not a huge number of Republicans deciding to vote yes on Amendment 3 for example. That's one thing that I think is important to keep in mind."

"The other thing is just that, at the elite level, when you think about politicians, like if I tell you a politician is pro-choice, [he or she] sort of immediately can fill in all their other political beliefs, because these things are so correlated. That's not necessarily true for voters. Voters have sort of potentially induce Socratic preferences. There's no necessary reason why wanting lower taxes and being pro-life need to go together. It's not altogether surprising that voters value different things differently. They may have an attachment to party, sort of an emotional attachment to a party, so it's not totally surprising that some people would sort of split their ticket in this win."

Discussion topic: Why might voters feel like they can split their ticket on candidates and policies?

"For one thing, voters value different issues differently. They weigh different things differently. So, imagine the hypothetical voter for whom abortion is the third- or fourth- or fifth- most important thing on their list of policy issues. So they may not really care that much either way, or it may not be the top-of-mind thing for them. So they're perfectly comfortable with what may seem like inconsistent decisions, and that's just a hypothetical."

"The other thing is, if someone, say you sort of have a really pro-choice Republican, they sort of know in a way they're tying Republican politicians' hands with their vote on this ballot measure. They don't, in essence, have to worry about that politician maybe not matching their preferences."

Discussion topic: Have voting trends consistent with this year's election results ever been seen before in Missouri or nationally?

"At least across the country in recent years, it's not an unusual pattern. We saw Kansans sort of expand access to abortion, but they had a similar type of thing [more Republicans than Democrat in state offices]. [An abortion rights measure] failed in Florida this election, but that's because it needed to hit 60%, not 50, and it got [57% support] in a state that's now very solidly-Republican. Those are for abortion specifically, but there is certainly a little bit of a pattern developing along these lines. Medicaid expansion was another big case where a number of quite-red states expanded Medicaid via a ballot measure."

"The other important thing to think about, this is not all sort of liberal 'bread-and-butter' policies that are ending up on the ballot. It's one for which a campaign emerges, enough signatures are gathered, it gets on the ballot [like Missouri's Amendment 3]. There's sort of a selection process of what's ultimately going to make it to the ballot as far as these things go. It's not surprising that there are disproportional things that end up being popular."

Discussion topic: Could this fall's voting pattern change how candidates go about future campaigns and how they try to deliver messages?

"Yeah. I think you certainly saw some of the statewide Democrats, for example, in this [year's] case [for Missouri offices], trying to hitch their wagon to Amendment 3 because there was a sense it was going to be more popular, which is sort of reverse of how you normally think. Normally you'd think of the 'down-ballot' types of things like ballot measures trying to link to candidates. So that's sort of an interesting reversal of conventional wisdom. But it's certainly the case too."

"If a Democrat wants to be competitive statewide in Missouri, I think they cannot be run-of-the-mill conventional taking-the-party-line on every issue Democrat. Democrats nationwide have shown in the not-so-distant past that they can win under exceptional circumstances. In places like Louisiana and Kentucky, they have recently had quite-Democrat governors. But there were things that distinguished those folks and made it clear they weren't necessarily a national-type Democrat."

Discussion topic: Is there any relation between what else transpired this election and the narrow approval of sports betting (Amendment 2) in Missouri?

"Looking at the map [of Missouri counties supporting sports betting], and it does so much smoother statewide than some of these other things where you get this sort of bright dots in the cities, like Columbia, and deep red in other places. In this case, it's a lot more even across the state, but you do basically see like the same pattern of the cities and more rural areas of the state [showing predictable, yet less extreme contrasts]."

"It's interesting to think about, and I don't have the answer, the extent to which this is about economic factors. Like the cities stand to benefit more in terms of economics because [of a] 'This will be good for sports teams, which will be good [for us' mindset]. People might think [of sports betting revenue] trickling into the local economies more generally. Those cities are also potentially on the state's borders. They're getting ads about sports gambling in adjacent states. But then there's also this sort of moral dimension of gambling too, which may be less popular with social conservatives who are more likely to live in more rural areas. It's interesting to think about these dynamics that might sort of cut against these things."