Missouri voters casting their ballots mostly for Republicans in the 2024 election was not a surprise, but some had predicted ballot measures about progressive topics such as abortion access would increase turnout for Democratic candidates.
That didn't happen.
University of Missouri Political Science Professor Peverill Squire sat down with KBIA's Harshawn Ratanpal to discuss his takeaways from this year's election.
RATANPAL: Based on last week's results, how would you characterize the Missouri electorate?
SQUIRE: I'd say the Missouri electorate today is more conservative and more Republican than it was a generation ago, primarily because of shifts in the rural part of the state. The urban areas remain liberal, the suburban areas remain competitive, and the rural areas are now very conservative. And where we used to have some Democrats representing conservative areas in the state general assembly, we have hardly any.
RATANPAL: How do you understand the phenomenon of voting for Republicans and conservative politicians across the board, but even by a smaller margin than maybe expected, voting for some of these liberal amendments?
SQUIRE: So I think they put Republicans in the General Assembly basically on the grounds of tax policy and on what they think is better for the economy, as well as driven by social issues, but when they're confronted with specific policy proposals, they often side with the Democrats.
HARSHAWN: And do we have an idea of why that's the case and how things have shaken out, and why there's that disconnect?
SQUIRE: Well, a disconnect has been in place for the last generation, and in part, it's because Democrats have lost touch with rural voters. It was probably 20 years ago on questions about guns and even on abortion and on some more general social issues. The way the world was changing was uncomfortable for rural areas, and they felt that they were being left out of the economic development, which in many ways they were, and looked down upon by the more urban elites who were holding much more progressive views than many conservative voters held, particularly on social issues.
RATANPAL: Do you think there's anything that Democrats or Republicans could do to change the dynamic that there is currently?
SQUIRE: There's not a lot that the Democrats can do. I mean, they can try to, again, connect with rural voters in a way that they haven't been able to, at least most of them. Governor Nixon was better at it than most Democrats, but they have to highlight issues where they think they can persuade rural voters in particular, that what the Democrats want is really consistent with what the voters want.
RATANPAL: You've written in the past about sort of ranking the quality of Senate challengers, the US Senate. Do you have any thoughts on how Lucas Kunce performed on that index?
SQUIRE: I think he did pretty well. I mean, one thing I was impressed by with his campaign was he raised enough money that he was on the air in television commercials throughout the campaign. And that's not an easy task.
RATANPAL: Anything else? What's sort of your, in summary, what you took away from this election?
SQUIRE: At the national level we're in for, to put it charitably, an interesting two years, there has been a lot of talk about some very aggressive policies. We'll see whether they're actually followed through on or not. It's often more difficult to do these things, and there will probably be more resistance than most people think. At the state level, things probably won't change much. I suspect Governor Kehoe will be not terribly different from Governor Parson.
