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Nearly six weeks have passed since the Supreme Court took away the right to abortion in America and in that time there have been multiple signs of a backlash in the making.

A surge in grassroots activism on behalf of abortion rights. An abrupt drop in small donations to Republicans . A slew of polls showing that the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization was highly unpopular .

But these were just hints. There was no way to know whether the decision would affect election results until Tuesday, when Kansas voters decisively rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure .

The proposal would have amended the Kansas constitution, clearing the way for Republican lawmakers to enact sweeping, possibly total bans on abortion . It failed by 18 points.

Or, to put it another way, nearly 6 in 10 Kansans just voted to keep abortion legal which, as HuffPosts Alanna Vagianos explained in her dispatch from Wichita, has big significance beyond state borders.

Since Roe fell, just over a dozen states in the South and Midwest have already severely restricted or banned abortion, making Kansas an unexpected refuge for abortion care. Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Missouri and Arkansas all have total abortion bans in effect. Other states, including North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Iowa, are in court challenging severe restrictions or waiting on bans to take effect. Put all those states together and you have most of the Midwest and much of the South.

But what about the political implications? Just how much optimism can abortion rights defenders take from Kansas? What would it take to get similar results in other states and nationally?

The Turnout Numbers Are Mind-Boggling

Probably the most encouraging sign for abortion rights supporters is the turnout numbers. About 910,000 residents cast ballots, which is more than twice the turnout rate of the last two primaries and approaching presidential election levels.

A particularly telling statistic is the turnout among unaffiliated voters that is, Kansans who didnt register with one party or the other, meaning they couldnt even vote in the nominating contests for U.S. Senate, governor and other races.

In recent primaries, only a few thousand unaffiliated voters cast ballots. This time, more than 150,000 did, according to a tabulation by Daniel Donner , a contributing editor at DailyKos elections.

The figures are especially remarkable given that amendments backers chose the August primary contest, rather than Novembers general election, because the primary typically gets lower, more Republican-leaning turnout.

This was done intentionally to make sure people wouldnt vote, and I think the opposite happened, Ethan Winter , a senior analyst at Data for Progress who ran field polls on the Kansas referendum, told HuffPost. This was a commanding win.

One more data point seems relevant.

Its about who registered to vote in Kansas after June 24, the date that the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision. Democrats had an 8-point advantage during that time span, TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier noted on Twitter, even though GOP registrations outnumbered Democrats statewide by 12 points. And 70% of the new registrants were women.

That last part is particularly interesting given some recent history. Donald Trumps presidency galvanized women voters, many of whom were disengaged from politics beforehand. Its a big reason Republicans lost control of Congress in 2018, and he lost the presidency in 2020.

Its not so hard to imagine something similar happening now, as the Dobbs decision makes real a threat to womens rights that previously was, or seemed to many, purely hypothetical.

Kansas Politics Matter, Too

All that said, some of the political conditions in Kansas were working against the amendment in ways that they might not work against similar measures in other conservative states or against candidates who oppose abortion rights in those states.

For one thing, ballot initiatives can run into status quo bias. Voters are naturally suspicious of change, and theres actually a history of abortion restrictions failing at the ballot box, even when polls suggest the the public is sympathetic to the cause. (Jonathan Robinson , director of research at Catalist, wrote about that phenomenon here .)