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The Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University is proud to present “Majority Rules 2025: Trends in State-Level Ballot Initiative Voting.”
DOWNLOAD "MAJORITY RULES 2025" HERE
In the 2024 election, voters appeared to swing to the right in virtually every region and demographic. The results of ballot initiative votes tell a very different story. Americans are trained to see politics in terms of Democrats and Republicans, but when people are allowed to vote directly on policies, they often make different choices from what you might expect looking through the “red-vs-blue” lens.
We gathered data on every state-level initiative over the past 15 years and one thing stands out: voters consistently support policies that equalize rights, resources, and decision-making power in society. Ballot measures that redistribute wealth from the rich to the rest are the most popular of all. CWD’s new report, Majority Rules 2025: Trends in State-Level Ballot Initiative Voting," provides updated research and analysis of ballot measures and the struggle for popular democracy in the United States.
The Ballot Initiatives Project explores the current fight over voters’ access to the ballot initiative process. In recent years, labor unions, rights advocacy groups, and grassroots organizations in multiple states have used citizen initiatives to pass policies that redistribute wealth, rights, and decision-making power to working people and marginalized communities—policies that are often treated as unrealistic or impracticable in partisan politics. Initiative votes have passed increased wage floors, Medicaid expansion, abortion rights, public school funding, checks on predatory debt-collection, and more, creating significant material gains for millions of people in red, blue, and purples states alike. Initiative wins, often by large margins, frequently rebuke politicians in these same states, demonstrating that there is far more popular agreement on policy than escalating partisan polarization would indicate. Now the initiative process is coming under attack from corporate interests and state legislators who stand to lose power to the popular vote. The fight over ballot initiatives is one of the most consequential voting rights struggles of our time, with deep implications for the future of the United States political system.
DOWNLOAD "MAJORITY RULES: THE BATTLE FOR BALLOT INITIATIVES" (2022) HERE
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