The Forum

Note: Some information in this article has been corrected by a later article. See corrections here.

Donald Trump will be returning to the White House in January following an overwhelming victory for him and the Republican party in the 2024 general election. The Associated Press has projected that Donald Trump won 312 electoral votes after managing to capture all seven swing states–Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. It is also projected that Donald Trump won the popular vote, which he has previously failed to do, even when he was first elected president in 2016.

The Republican party additionally won control of both chambers of U.S. Congress, achieving a governmental trifecta. The U.S. Senate flipped from a narrow Democratic majority of 48 Democrats, two Independents that caucus with (align and organize with) the Democratic party, and Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote, to a Republican majority of 53 with Vice President-Elect JD Vance as the tie-breaking vote. At the time of writing, the Associated Press has not yet called all U.S. House of Representatives elections, but they have projected that the Republican party has won 218 House seats, retaining their previous majority, and that the Democratic party has won 212. Five House races have yet to be determined.

In Missouri, voters passed Proposition 3, a ballot issue to enshrine abortion rights into the Missouri Constitution, by a vote of 51.6% to 48.4%. Missouri began enforcing its near-total abortion ban–which lacked exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest–after the fall of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, becoming the first state to do so. Missouri had previously passed the so-called “trigger law” in 2019 while abortion was still federally protected under the precedent of Roe v. Wade; it was designed to become effective if the landmark Supreme Court decision was overruled.

Voters in Missouri also overwhelmingly approved Proposition 7, a ballot issue to explicitly ban non-citizen voting in the Missouri Constitution as well as to ban ranked-choice voting and any other voting method besides first-past-the-post, which is the standard system for elections across the United States. Notably, this will force the City of St. Louis, which uses an electoral system called “approval voting,” to revert to the first-past-the-post standard, as their usage of approval voting will be rendered unconstitutional. Moreover, it is already federally illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. On the state level–according to both the Missouri Independent and Fox 2–the existing language of the Missouri Constitution already implied that non-citizens are not allowed to vote prior to the passage of Amendment 7. This is now made more explicit in the text of the law.

Proposition A, a ballot issue that promised to increase the minimum wage in Missouri as well as require employers to provide paid sick leave, was backed by Missouri voters as well. Now that the proposition has passed, Missouri’s minimum wage will increase by $1.25 per hour every year, starting on Jan. 1, 2025, until it becomes $15 in 2026. After that, the minimum wage will be adjusted yearly to match inflation, as determined by the Consumer Price Index. Furthermore, Missourians will now be guaranteed one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked; this rule does not apply to government or educational institutions, though.

An amendment to legalize sports betting in Missouri was passed by an incredibly narrow margin. Amendment 2, according to data available on the Secretary of State website as well as analysis by the Associated Press, passed by a vote of roughly 50.1% in favor of the amendment compared to 49.9% opposed. It will legalize both in-person and online sports betting within the state of Missouri and impose a 10% tax on wagers, which would be allocated to education and gambling addiction prevention through the Compulsive Gambling Prevention Fund. Under Amendment 2, sports betting would be restricted to those 21 years-of-age and above and would be regulated by the Missouri Gaming Commission. Early reporting on Nov. 6 estimated that the measure won by slightly less than 7,500 votes, but data from the Associated Press and the Secretary of State now reflects a margin of less than 5,000 votes.

The two other ballot issues in Missouri–Amendment 5 and Amendment 6–were defeated. Amendment 5 would have allowed Missouri to grant an additional gambling boat license for a gambling boat on the Osage River near the Lake of the Ozarks. The Missouri Constitution currently allows for a maximum of thirteen gambling licenses in the state; Amendment 5 sought to increase that number to fourteen. The effort to pass the amendment was led by Bally’s, a gaming company that planned to open a hotel, casino, and convention center complex at the Lake of the Ozarks if the amendment passed. Their proposal to build a casino comes at the same time that the Osage Nation, a Native American nation currently based in Oklahoma, is currently working to build a casino in the same region, which is part of the nation’s ancestral homeland in Missouri. 

Amendment 6 sought to allow the Missouri General Assembly to impose fees on court cases to fund employment benefits–including hefty pensions–of current and retired county sheriffs and prosecutors. It was rejected by a quite overwhelming vote of more than 60%.

Missouri also elected a number of state and federal officials–including one U.S. Senator, its 8 U.S Representatives, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the State Treasurer, and the Attorney General. While many new people were elected to these positions, the party composition of these offices didn’t change; the Republican Party won every state-wide office, with Republican Mike Kehoe replacing incumbent Governor Mike Parson, and Democrats retained two U.S. House of Representatives seats, with all others going to Republicans. Here in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell will replace incumbent Congresswoman Cori Bush after defeating her in the primary election in August; he is still identified as a progressive, but is more centrist than Cori Bush on many issues, including his continued support of Israel amid the Israeli invasion of Gaza and Southern Lebanon. 

While Missouri met some progressive victories with its ballot issues, we still remain an overwhelmingly conservative and Republican-dominated state. The GOP saw many wins in Missouri in terms of holding elected offices, but ultimately failed to prevent the success of a popular abortion-rights amendment, a trend seen across the country in the 2024 general election.