Missouri’s 2026 election results prove that the GOP can’t govern through culture war edicts 

President Donald Trump speaks during an Oct. 19, 2026, rally at the Heartland Credit Union Arena in Park City, Kansas. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

The voters across Missouri, truly the entire United States, witnessed history on election day earlier this week. Once again this year, Missouri’s disgruntled voters overwhelmingly opposed the half-baked culture war ballot initiatives of the state GOP.

Meanwhile, neighboring Kansas voters elected a Democratic senator for the first time since the Great Depression. These results are emblematic of the disdain this country has for those in power: President Donald Trump and MAGA far-right acolytes who exploited the people’s collective fears by throwing immigrants and trans people under a bigoted, gold-emblazoned, Qatari-donated bus.

And as expected, the finger-pointing and blame game has begun as scores of the local, state, and national Republican party bosses try to fathom how badly they lost. Texas now has Democrats in one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats, the governorship, and the very powerful attorney general—a once-in-a-generation win and a true coup for longstanding conservative power there. South Carolina and North Carolina produced major wins for Senate Democrats to reclaim the majority in the upper house.

Political pundits call this a “blue tsunami.” I call it a reckoning for the lawlessness enabled by Republicans and Trumpian diehards that have long held power in  Missouri. If the results from Tuesday’s elections signify anything, it is that the voters are tired of bullshit culture war talking points, overt corruption, and the brazen violence carried out by the federal government’s stormtroopers—the many agents of ICE and the entire U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I do digress from that soapbox.

Many of my readers in the state know that a core issue for me is bodily autonomy. And when I refer to “bodily autonomy,” I do mean a true respect for the people’s reproductive freedoms, and sexual and gender rights.

Proudly, I can report to our readers that Amendment 3—the 2026 GOP-backed version that would have placed a ban on abortion in most cases and on gender affirming care for trans and gender-expansive minors in Missouri’s constitution—was soundly (and rightfully) defeated. At the time of this writing, unofficial results confirm that nearly 55 percent voted “no,” leaving in place crucial protections for reproductive rights in the state. This was a clear rebuke to statewide leaders who backed the attempt to again ban abortion and force the boot down harder on trans people and their families.

What is most apparent to voters looking at the state lawmakers who referred Amendment 3 to the ballot this year is that so-called “pro-family” policymaking rarely is that. We’ve seen this for years now—Republicans in Jefferson City claiming that the voting public supports political and policy positions that further marginalize groups of people already at the margins of our society.

National polling from March 2026 conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that 6 in 10 Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

An unofficial calculation of the Amendment 3 result shows those who voted “yes” at a little over 45 percent versus the aforementioned 55 percent who voted “no.” A total of 2,148,888 ballots were cast in this particular race on Tuesday. All of these numbers can change, remember that. But doing some simple math here shows us a voting margin of roughly 10 percent, with about 11 in 20 Missouri voters saying “no” to reinstating an abortion ban. That is nearly an identical statistic to the 6 in 10 Americans that Pew says support abortion access in all or most cases. Add the variable of Amendment 3 being used as a vehicle by Republicans to further hurt trans kids and their families, and the voters of Missouri indicated clear frustration with the Republican-controlled regime.

Another indicator was Amendment 6, which protects citizen ballot initiatives by restricting the state legislature from amending or repealing any law created through these processes. It was a 60-40 split, with the majority rebuking sentiments from the bubble of the state capital that MAGA-branded and GOP-encouraged social conservatism is analogous to sentiments shared by the majority of the population. Cases in point: voters killed efforts to repeal the state income tax during the primary and general elections, and declared that the Trump-instigated gerrymandering from the last couple of years was a bridge too far.

Lastly, I want to highlight what we all witnessed in Missouri’s 2nd congressional district, the wealthiest congressional district in the entire Show Me State. Rep. Ann Wagner, the conservative Republican from the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, has held the seat since 2013—that’s 13 years. However, she lost the seat to Democratic challenger Fred Wellman in a district that saw an 8 point margin in favor of President Trump and the Republicans during the 2024 presidential election.

This seat flip, contributing to the now-commanding Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, signifies an inflection point for statewide GOP control in Missouri. That control is waning and is directly tied to voter fatigue and a collective desire for meaningful change in the national economy, plus more transparency and accountability in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and Jefferson City.

These results also signal something undeniable in Missouri’s and the nation’s political culture. The era of weaponizing culture war wedge issues to distract voters is finally colliding with a profound demand for bodily autonomy, equal rights for trans and queer people, and commonsensical, pragmatic governance. And for our elected officials who fail to heed these messages do so at their own political peril. In the timeless words of the very-likely-to-be-impeached Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth: “FAFO.”

If you fuck around, you will find out.

Michael McGrady Jr is a political columnist for The Pitch.