The Success of People First Policies: Give the People What They Want!

On the evening of November 5, 2024, I sat at a gathering of organizers and volunteers from the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a citizen-driven initiative in Arizona seeking to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution. 

After an hour or so of waiting with baited breath, the bulk of Arizona’s ballot initiative results had been counted and posted online. Our hard work had paid off! Prop 139 had amassed 66 percent voter support (a number that would decrease to a still impressive 61 percent by the final tally.) After a significant round of applause and the shedding of a few tears, the party settled into a pleasant thrum.

At first I expected shouting, screaming, and crying – we had won a massive victory! But I quickly understood that the celebration was more subdued than expected because the results were exactly what the lead organizers of the campaign had anticipated: a win.

Ultimately, it was unsurprising that this initiative to enshrine abortion access passed in Arizona, despite voters in the state supporting anti-abortion candidate Donald Trump, because reproductive freedom itself as a policy has proven to be overwhelmingly popular when put to a vote by the electorate.

A recent report from our team at the Center for Work and Democracy uses data from citizen-driven initiatives — ballot initiatives that are drafted, petitioned, and voted on by citizens themselves — from the last fifteen years to see where patterns in voting emerge. Put very briefly, we found that people vote for policies that are egalitarian and economically redistributive.

Egalitarian measures —which equalize rights, resources, and decision-making power in society — pass at a rate of 65.63 percent across blue and red states alike. Initiatives supporting reproductive rights, for example, are considered egalitarian and prove to be extremely successful at the polls. Despite a difficult loss in Florida in the 2024 election and a complicated voting stalemate in Nebraska, abortion access has been protected by voters in 14 out of 17 cases since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Redistributive measures are a subsect of egalitarian initiatives that specifically focus on the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, like raising the minimum wage. With an even greater passage rate than other egalitarian measures, redistributive ballot measures clock in with an impressive win rate of 75 percent. In red states, this number rises all the way to a whopping 92 percent compared to 61.29 percent in blue states. (We found that blue states’ averages are skewed down by California’s initiative results, which are far less progressive than the state’s image.)

When Healthcare Rising Arizona and the other co-organizers of the campaign for Prop 139 set out to get the initiative on the ballot and enshrined in the state constitution, they knew that party politics were not going to help their cause. From day one, the campaign for 139 was clear that their organizing would be strictly non-partisan because they knew that abortion as a policy was more popular than any individual democratic candidates, despite those democrats being vocally pro-choice. 

The strategy worked. The Arizona for Abortion Access Act passed with 417,427 more votes than Vice President Kamala Harris received in Arizona, proving that egalitarian policies like reproductive rights are simply more popular than pro-choice candidates.

Healthcare Rising and Prop 139 won because they refused to partake in party politics and instead tailored their campaign toward fighting for issues that were resonant and supported in their constituency and across the political spectrum. 

Our data tells us that egalitarian and redistributive measures are exceedingly popular with red and blue voters alike. So if Republican and Democrat voters both want many of the same things – policies that equalize rights, break down wealth inequality, and support the decision-making power of everyday people – why won’t politicians just give the people what they want?