I agree with these predicted results, disagree strongly that policy changes of the last four months are what's causing it.
Assigning primary blame for Dem's likely Senate loss to the student debt relief "stepping on" anti-inflation measures is android brain thinking, and not exactly reflective of what voters think about and hear, particularly in the states where it matters.
Not that many people care much about policy, no matter how much they think they do. They care about how they feel in general, and to a lesser extent, who they trust to keep their word--swing voters in particular.
Right now swing voters are a mix of irritated, unhappy, and bored. The economy and world feel bad, because gas/egg/milk/meat prices are up and there's a war on in Europe. They hear vaguely about abortion horror stories in the news, but few relate directly to them. They've heard Biden doing things like "IRA" and "chip bills" and "infrastructure" and "student debt relief", which all sounds nice, but it isn't helping them in the short term. They kinda-sorta trust Biden personally to keep his word (a turnaround from earlier in the year), but still aren't happy with the situation.
So they think, "might vote, might not. That local politician guy is saying a lot about 'time for a change'. Eh."
Very rarely will you see them think, "Gosh, Democrats' abortion message goes beyond the Roe protections! And student debt relief negates their inflationary policy priorities! THAT JUST GRINDS MY ANDROID BRAIN GEARS!"
I mean, some of them might. Perhaps they do. You'll have to hang out there longer than a week or two to find out.
It would be nice if you identified the state when you refer to a candidate. Except for the incumbents it was hard to figure out where people are running.
It seem crazy to me that anyone could expect that marginal/swing voters look at Biden's student debt proposal and thinks "Man, that's inflationary. He doesn't care about inflation." While there are a few objections that the marginal/swing voter might have, seeing it as inflationary is just not one of them.
Matt preaches that we need to better understand that the the median voter is over 50 and never went to college. He makes a good point. The median voter is likely quite unlike you -- the reader of this comment.
Does Matt think that the median voter looks at debt relief and thinks "Inflationary"?
I like this post. I'll take this opportunity to pre-register my take on the midterms, with much lower stakes because I'm not known at all for making good predictions and I don't make a living from posting on the internet. Also, instead of making a forecast in terms of relative probability I'm just going to straight up try to guess what's going to happen in three weeks. (If the weatherman says there's a 15% chance of rain he's not wrong rain or shine. It's the guy who doesn't take his umbrella on a walk that's taking a real risk)
I think the Dems increase their Senate majority by at least 2 seats and hold onto the house.
I think this will happen for several reasons:
1. "Rovember" There was a huge surge in voter registrations this summer and I think most of those people will vote for Dems and won't show up in likely voter samples because they haven't voted before.
2. Matt is right that the GOP voter is skewing more towards socially alienated people who don't respond to polls, but those people are also less likely to vote in off-year elections and many aren't even aware that there are separate branches of the federal government.
3. January 6th has turned off a small number of conservative voters who either will not vote or will vote for dems (admittedly this should show up in polls).
4. Demographic changes - Boomers are more conservative and are starting to age out of the electorate while millennials are coming into middle age and are more likely to do lame boring stuff like shop for tile or vote in the midterms. Also tens of thousands of Covid-incautious voters, who skew conservative, spent part of the last 2 years dying from Covid-19.
A good portion of the argument here hinges on student debt relief hampering the democrats' campaigns. AFAWCT, it's popular, though. Even if the polls are off by a couple points, it's still above water. It's especially popular with younger voters who vote democratic in presidential elections, but tend to drop off in midterms. That, and dope, seem clearly intended as motivators for those intermitant voters. Even if those calculations don't pan out, I doubt the typical voter has any clear understanding of the inflationary dynamics of debt relief.
I know, you're never supposed to look at individual polls and only at the average, but I think Ann Selzer is an important exception to that rule. Her polls have been a better predictor of election outcomes over the past 15 years than either the average of all the Iowa polls or 538's forecasts: https://secondhandcartography.com/2022/10/15/ann-selzer/.
So when she releases a poll showing the incumbent Republican only up by 3 in Iowa, I think that's the single best result the Democrats have gotten this election cycle. It's such a good result that I think 538 and PredictIt are severely underestimating the Democrats' chances. I give the Democrats an 80% chance of keeping the Senate and a 45% chance of keeping the House.
Selzer is particularly well known for not following the herd with her polls. This can mean sometimes she sees what others miss but also that she can sometimes have outliers.
More to the point, Grassley is 89. It's not hard to believe that there are specific candidate quality issues at work there that wouldn't translate everywhere.
No what will be the real , huge drag on Democrats is inflation. It their is bad luck that the Fed messed up so badly in 2021. But then Democrats should never have been trying to claim that the recovery was due to their policies and at every mention of inflation have shown "every confidence that the Fed has it well under control and would keep it that way/ would successfully bring it back down without causing a recession. IF they had in fact been reducing the structural deficit and had never uttered the word "stimulus," they could have been forgiven for the white lie of claiming to be helping.
"Back in 2020 when inflation wasn’t a problem, debt forgiveness advocates routinely (and correctly) described it as stimulus."
Democrats should never have wanted to "stimulate" the economy. Relieving actual suffering in a recession is an excellent reason to spend money without increasing taxes at the very same time to pay for it, but not to add to the structural deficit (as interest on debt does.) The job of fiscal policy is to create the incentives for long term growth, invest in activities that have positive NPV's when all costs (unemployed resources) are benefits (CO2 emissions reduction) are properly evaluated and transfer income from those who need it less to those who need it more, rich to poor, well to sick, employed to unemployed. It the Fed's job to stimulate the economy enough and not too much to keep inflation on targets and employment at a maximum.
Student debt relief, much of 2021 (and 2020) spending cannot be justified on these principles.
"But individual Democratic Party candidates keep squandering it by staking out a very odd 'no restrictions on abortion under any circumstances' position rather than promising to return to the pre-Dobbs status quo or even copying the actually existing policy in liberal states."
Here in liberal Oregon, the actually existing policy is "no restrictions on abortion under any circumstances." But there are only a handful of states where this is acceptable, and it is obviously suicidal as a national policy.
Leaving the strategy question aside, doesn’t the actual prediction here boil down to “It is more likely that this is a normal midterm than that pollsters have changed their models to account for polling errors in the past!”
After all, Nate Silver’s basic argument is that pollsters calibrate from year to year, and that there is no correlation in the direction of polling errors from one election to the next for that reason. Matt’s rejecting that, but his argument has nothing to do with the pollsters and everything to do with “I don’t think the Democrats have adopted the right strategy.”
Well, that may or may not be true (it probably is and I wish we had fifty Tim Ryan’s in swing state races), but when an argument for one’s prediction doesn’t address the main reason for 538’s predictions being where they are, it looks a lot more like mood affiliation than an actual assessment of probability.
Excellent newsletter!! In my opinion, you have hit all the correct buttons. In addition, we see too many regular voters, as well as media, afraid to speak up and confront extreme “Progressive “ views. Example, in our church hierarchy reparations (including donations of money) are on the front burner. A committee of people who believe very strongly for this need has proposed being entirely in charge of distribution. When I ask why there no guides or audits proposed, no one in leadership wants to speak up and confront the small group. People who know me know I have strong opinions, but when a logical rebuttal is given, I can discuss and change my views. I was raised in a family who had frequent emotionally laden differences in politics and foreign policy. Few people, especially after the isolation of Covid, are willing to risk being called ugly names. If only we were able to command Civility in our National discussions, like in the Bulwark Group, perhaps we might get Center-Right and Center-Left to speak up more loudly.
I think you are making the same mistake I've seen others make on polling error. Polling is not off by the same amount in all places. It's worse in the midwest than it is in other parts of the country. I looked up the numbers for 538 polling averages vs. the actual results in 2016/18/20 elections this week and here are the numbers
I kept all those the same races for consistency but Georgia didn't have a 2018 senate race so I took 2016 and the 2 2020 senate races
GA:
2016 Senate - 1.3
2016 Pres - 1.1
2020 Sen - -1.5
2020 Sen (special) - 0.8
2020 Pres - 0.7
To me, this means that the races in OH and WI are not nearly as close as 538 odds which you agree with. But I think it is more optimistic for GA and AZ where the polls aren't nearly as off.
Matt says it contributed to the Democrats' midsummer peak but it has faded because Democratic candidates are offering radical proposals on abortion rights. I doubt that very much. Most of the Democrat and activist energy (as well as media stories) have been focused on the horrors of red state abortion restrictions (e.g., https://www.mother.ly/news/texas-abortion-ban-miscarriage/)
And if the issue is fading in salience now and voters are moving on to other concerns, or no concerns at all, how can we explain that except for Mr. Feiler's thesis that nothing sticks for very long?
Though if voting shows Kansas-like anger on this issue, I will ecstatically declare myself wrong.
I am looking forward to Dems losing badly. The party needs to be seriously disciplined so that we don’t elect Trump again in 2024. I don’t want to hear Latinx, “the pandemic isn’t over”, student debt nonsense, “climate justice”, or completely spurious claims about the impact of voting restrictions between November 4 2022 and November 4 2024. They can go back to indulging their fantasies once Trump is off the table.
I could lament how depressing it is that a bunch of liars, election deniers, and lickspittles of the Orange God King have such high chances of winning, but that gets boring and repetitive.
Instead, I'll play a fun edition of "Would You Rather?" by answering Matt Y.'s questions:
"So to tempt voters away from literal fascism, have they been given candidates in the purple districts (D+4/R+4) who disagree with progressives about gun control? Who support banning late-term abortions? Who have qualms about trans women competing against cis women in college sports? Who favor changing asylum law to try to cut off the flow of migrants arriving at the southern border? Who think it’s a problem that college admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants and low-income whites?"
1. Gun control: I think America already has ridiculously lax gun laws, and gun death rates in America are effing insane compared to the rest of the wealthy, developed world. So agreeing to loosen gun laws in exchange for preventing fascism is a big ask. I would do it, with a heavy heart, but I would feel like I had blood on my hands.
2. Banning late term abortions: Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that under Roe v. Wade, late term abortions were already heavily restricted and allowed only if the mother's life or health was in danger, or if the fetus was inviable. That's what I want to go back to. I just don't have the heart to tell a woman with a life-threatening complication in late pregnancy, "Sorry, you must die, because fighting fascism is more important."
3. Qualms about trans women competing in women's sports: Heh, I already have such qualms, so you'll get no argument from me.
4. Changing asylum laws to get fewer asylum seekers: Ehhhh.... Ummmm.... This is a super, super hard one! Both my husband and I are Democrats and we agree on pretty much everything politically, but our one area of disagreement is immigration, where I'm the hard-ass "we can't just let in everybody!" one. Again, though, I would hate to tell asylum seekers, "Tough s**t, you have to go back to your violent, unstable country! No room for you!" What I really want is for the U.S. to work with Central American governments to make their countries more livable, so fewer people want to leave (unrealistic on many levels, I know). That said, if I had to throw some asylum seekers under the proverbial bus to save democracy, would I do it? I really don't know. Both choices feel wrong.
5. Is it a problem that college admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants and low-income whites? Darn straight it's a problem and it's unfair.
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Under Roe and Casey states couldn't regulate abortion at all until some point in the 2nd trimester, and even then those were limited regulations until the 3rd trimester because of the "undue burden" standard. Roe and Casey did not ban late term abortions. It allowed states to ban late term abortions, and up until the last 10ish years all states did so. Now Oregon, Vermont, and New York allow abortion on demand up until birth, and that is pretty much the public stance of most Democratic party leaders and candidates.
I agree with these predicted results, disagree strongly that policy changes of the last four months are what's causing it.
Assigning primary blame for Dem's likely Senate loss to the student debt relief "stepping on" anti-inflation measures is android brain thinking, and not exactly reflective of what voters think about and hear, particularly in the states where it matters.
Not that many people care much about policy, no matter how much they think they do. They care about how they feel in general, and to a lesser extent, who they trust to keep their word--swing voters in particular.
Right now swing voters are a mix of irritated, unhappy, and bored. The economy and world feel bad, because gas/egg/milk/meat prices are up and there's a war on in Europe. They hear vaguely about abortion horror stories in the news, but few relate directly to them. They've heard Biden doing things like "IRA" and "chip bills" and "infrastructure" and "student debt relief", which all sounds nice, but it isn't helping them in the short term. They kinda-sorta trust Biden personally to keep his word (a turnaround from earlier in the year), but still aren't happy with the situation.
So they think, "might vote, might not. That local politician guy is saying a lot about 'time for a change'. Eh."
Very rarely will you see them think, "Gosh, Democrats' abortion message goes beyond the Roe protections! And student debt relief negates their inflationary policy priorities! THAT JUST GRINDS MY ANDROID BRAIN GEARS!"
I mean, some of them might. Perhaps they do. You'll have to hang out there longer than a week or two to find out.
It would be nice if you identified the state when you refer to a candidate. Except for the incumbents it was hard to figure out where people are running.
It seem crazy to me that anyone could expect that marginal/swing voters look at Biden's student debt proposal and thinks "Man, that's inflationary. He doesn't care about inflation." While there are a few objections that the marginal/swing voter might have, seeing it as inflationary is just not one of them.
Matt preaches that we need to better understand that the the median voter is over 50 and never went to college. He makes a good point. The median voter is likely quite unlike you -- the reader of this comment.
Does Matt think that the median voter looks at debt relief and thinks "Inflationary"?
I like this post. I'll take this opportunity to pre-register my take on the midterms, with much lower stakes because I'm not known at all for making good predictions and I don't make a living from posting on the internet. Also, instead of making a forecast in terms of relative probability I'm just going to straight up try to guess what's going to happen in three weeks. (If the weatherman says there's a 15% chance of rain he's not wrong rain or shine. It's the guy who doesn't take his umbrella on a walk that's taking a real risk)
I think the Dems increase their Senate majority by at least 2 seats and hold onto the house.
I think this will happen for several reasons:
1. "Rovember" There was a huge surge in voter registrations this summer and I think most of those people will vote for Dems and won't show up in likely voter samples because they haven't voted before.
2. Matt is right that the GOP voter is skewing more towards socially alienated people who don't respond to polls, but those people are also less likely to vote in off-year elections and many aren't even aware that there are separate branches of the federal government.
3. January 6th has turned off a small number of conservative voters who either will not vote or will vote for dems (admittedly this should show up in polls).
4. Demographic changes - Boomers are more conservative and are starting to age out of the electorate while millennials are coming into middle age and are more likely to do lame boring stuff like shop for tile or vote in the midterms. Also tens of thousands of Covid-incautious voters, who skew conservative, spent part of the last 2 years dying from Covid-19.
A good portion of the argument here hinges on student debt relief hampering the democrats' campaigns. AFAWCT, it's popular, though. Even if the polls are off by a couple points, it's still above water. It's especially popular with younger voters who vote democratic in presidential elections, but tend to drop off in midterms. That, and dope, seem clearly intended as motivators for those intermitant voters. Even if those calculations don't pan out, I doubt the typical voter has any clear understanding of the inflationary dynamics of debt relief.
I'd go the other way, and point out one piece of evidence that the polls may actually be underestimating the Democrats' chances: Ann Selzer's latest poll of Iowa, which showed Grassley up by 3 over Mike Franken (https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2022/10/15/iowa-us-senate-race-chuck-grassley-mike-franken-poll-election/69562063007/)
I know, you're never supposed to look at individual polls and only at the average, but I think Ann Selzer is an important exception to that rule. Her polls have been a better predictor of election outcomes over the past 15 years than either the average of all the Iowa polls or 538's forecasts: https://secondhandcartography.com/2022/10/15/ann-selzer/.
So when she releases a poll showing the incumbent Republican only up by 3 in Iowa, I think that's the single best result the Democrats have gotten this election cycle. It's such a good result that I think 538 and PredictIt are severely underestimating the Democrats' chances. I give the Democrats an 80% chance of keeping the Senate and a 45% chance of keeping the House.
Selzer is particularly well known for not following the herd with her polls. This can mean sometimes she sees what others miss but also that she can sometimes have outliers.
More to the point, Grassley is 89. It's not hard to believe that there are specific candidate quality issues at work there that wouldn't translate everywhere.
No what will be the real , huge drag on Democrats is inflation. It their is bad luck that the Fed messed up so badly in 2021. But then Democrats should never have been trying to claim that the recovery was due to their policies and at every mention of inflation have shown "every confidence that the Fed has it well under control and would keep it that way/ would successfully bring it back down without causing a recession. IF they had in fact been reducing the structural deficit and had never uttered the word "stimulus," they could have been forgiven for the white lie of claiming to be helping.
"I can only hope they will also learn to regret the ideological rigidity that made the loss almost inevitable."
"I can only hope they will also learn to regret ignoring sound economics, win or lose."
"Back in 2020 when inflation wasn’t a problem, debt forgiveness advocates routinely (and correctly) described it as stimulus."
Democrats should never have wanted to "stimulate" the economy. Relieving actual suffering in a recession is an excellent reason to spend money without increasing taxes at the very same time to pay for it, but not to add to the structural deficit (as interest on debt does.) The job of fiscal policy is to create the incentives for long term growth, invest in activities that have positive NPV's when all costs (unemployed resources) are benefits (CO2 emissions reduction) are properly evaluated and transfer income from those who need it less to those who need it more, rich to poor, well to sick, employed to unemployed. It the Fed's job to stimulate the economy enough and not too much to keep inflation on targets and employment at a maximum.
Student debt relief, much of 2021 (and 2020) spending cannot be justified on these principles.
"But individual Democratic Party candidates keep squandering it by staking out a very odd 'no restrictions on abortion under any circumstances' position rather than promising to return to the pre-Dobbs status quo or even copying the actually existing policy in liberal states."
Here in liberal Oregon, the actually existing policy is "no restrictions on abortion under any circumstances." But there are only a handful of states where this is acceptable, and it is obviously suicidal as a national policy.
Leaving the strategy question aside, doesn’t the actual prediction here boil down to “It is more likely that this is a normal midterm than that pollsters have changed their models to account for polling errors in the past!”
After all, Nate Silver’s basic argument is that pollsters calibrate from year to year, and that there is no correlation in the direction of polling errors from one election to the next for that reason. Matt’s rejecting that, but his argument has nothing to do with the pollsters and everything to do with “I don’t think the Democrats have adopted the right strategy.”
Well, that may or may not be true (it probably is and I wish we had fifty Tim Ryan’s in swing state races), but when an argument for one’s prediction doesn’t address the main reason for 538’s predictions being where they are, it looks a lot more like mood affiliation than an actual assessment of probability.
Excellent newsletter!! In my opinion, you have hit all the correct buttons. In addition, we see too many regular voters, as well as media, afraid to speak up and confront extreme “Progressive “ views. Example, in our church hierarchy reparations (including donations of money) are on the front burner. A committee of people who believe very strongly for this need has proposed being entirely in charge of distribution. When I ask why there no guides or audits proposed, no one in leadership wants to speak up and confront the small group. People who know me know I have strong opinions, but when a logical rebuttal is given, I can discuss and change my views. I was raised in a family who had frequent emotionally laden differences in politics and foreign policy. Few people, especially after the isolation of Covid, are willing to risk being called ugly names. If only we were able to command Civility in our National discussions, like in the Bulwark Group, perhaps we might get Center-Right and Center-Left to speak up more loudly.
SallyJones
I think you are making the same mistake I've seen others make on polling error. Polling is not off by the same amount in all places. It's worse in the midwest than it is in other parts of the country. I looked up the numbers for 538 polling averages vs. the actual results in 2016/18/20 elections this week and here are the numbers
State: 2016 Pres/2018 senate/2020 Pres (positive numbers favor R, negative D)
OH: 6.2/5.1/7.4
WI: 6.1/1.3/7.8
PA: 4.4/-1.4/3.5
MI: 4.4/4.2/5.2
NV: -1.2/-3.9/3.7
AZ: 1.3/-0.6/2.3
I kept all those the same races for consistency but Georgia didn't have a 2018 senate race so I took 2016 and the 2 2020 senate races
GA:
2016 Senate - 1.3
2016 Pres - 1.1
2020 Sen - -1.5
2020 Sen (special) - 0.8
2020 Pres - 0.7
To me, this means that the races in OH and WI are not nearly as close as 538 odds which you agree with. But I think it is more optimistic for GA and AZ where the polls aren't nearly as off.
I'm the last person to be a Mickey Kaus fan but his touting of the Feiler Faster Thesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feiler_faster_thesis#:~:text=The%20Feiler%20faster%20thesis%20(FFT,public's%20desire%20for%20more%20information) is something I think about a lot. Especially with regard to the politics of abortion.
Matt says it contributed to the Democrats' midsummer peak but it has faded because Democratic candidates are offering radical proposals on abortion rights. I doubt that very much. Most of the Democrat and activist energy (as well as media stories) have been focused on the horrors of red state abortion restrictions (e.g., https://www.mother.ly/news/texas-abortion-ban-miscarriage/)
And if the issue is fading in salience now and voters are moving on to other concerns, or no concerns at all, how can we explain that except for Mr. Feiler's thesis that nothing sticks for very long?
Though if voting shows Kansas-like anger on this issue, I will ecstatically declare myself wrong.
I am looking forward to Dems losing badly. The party needs to be seriously disciplined so that we don’t elect Trump again in 2024. I don’t want to hear Latinx, “the pandemic isn’t over”, student debt nonsense, “climate justice”, or completely spurious claims about the impact of voting restrictions between November 4 2022 and November 4 2024. They can go back to indulging their fantasies once Trump is off the table.
I could lament how depressing it is that a bunch of liars, election deniers, and lickspittles of the Orange God King have such high chances of winning, but that gets boring and repetitive.
Instead, I'll play a fun edition of "Would You Rather?" by answering Matt Y.'s questions:
"So to tempt voters away from literal fascism, have they been given candidates in the purple districts (D+4/R+4) who disagree with progressives about gun control? Who support banning late-term abortions? Who have qualms about trans women competing against cis women in college sports? Who favor changing asylum law to try to cut off the flow of migrants arriving at the southern border? Who think it’s a problem that college admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants and low-income whites?"
1. Gun control: I think America already has ridiculously lax gun laws, and gun death rates in America are effing insane compared to the rest of the wealthy, developed world. So agreeing to loosen gun laws in exchange for preventing fascism is a big ask. I would do it, with a heavy heart, but I would feel like I had blood on my hands.
2. Banning late term abortions: Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that under Roe v. Wade, late term abortions were already heavily restricted and allowed only if the mother's life or health was in danger, or if the fetus was inviable. That's what I want to go back to. I just don't have the heart to tell a woman with a life-threatening complication in late pregnancy, "Sorry, you must die, because fighting fascism is more important."
3. Qualms about trans women competing in women's sports: Heh, I already have such qualms, so you'll get no argument from me.
4. Changing asylum laws to get fewer asylum seekers: Ehhhh.... Ummmm.... This is a super, super hard one! Both my husband and I are Democrats and we agree on pretty much everything politically, but our one area of disagreement is immigration, where I'm the hard-ass "we can't just let in everybody!" one. Again, though, I would hate to tell asylum seekers, "Tough s**t, you have to go back to your violent, unstable country! No room for you!" What I really want is for the U.S. to work with Central American governments to make their countries more livable, so fewer people want to leave (unrealistic on many levels, I know). That said, if I had to throw some asylum seekers under the proverbial bus to save democracy, would I do it? I really don't know. Both choices feel wrong.
5. Is it a problem that college admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants and low-income whites? Darn straight it's a problem and it's unfair.
How did I do? Did I save democracy?
As for my own answer (good idea, by the way!) #4 is the only one I'd have a very difficult time setting aside.
To add onto what Sean said regarding #2, here it is straight from the syllabus: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113
====
(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Under Roe and Casey states couldn't regulate abortion at all until some point in the 2nd trimester, and even then those were limited regulations until the 3rd trimester because of the "undue burden" standard. Roe and Casey did not ban late term abortions. It allowed states to ban late term abortions, and up until the last 10ish years all states did so. Now Oregon, Vermont, and New York allow abortion on demand up until birth, and that is pretty much the public stance of most Democratic party leaders and candidates.