The early-August primaries are in the books and there were some interesting results. In Missouri, the GOP took a seat Democrats hoped to make competitive off the board after controversial candidate Eric Greitens was thoroughly embarrassed. Eric Schmitt will now cruise to a general election victory in November.

In Arizona, Blake Masters will face off against incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly for the state’s senate seat while it appears Kari Lake will pull her primary out in a much closer than expected race.

But it was a race that involved no person on the ballot at all that is stealing the headlines. An amendment in Kansas that would have allowed the state to pass stricter abortion laws failed, causing Democrats and the election analyst bros on Twitter to proclaim total victory for the left.

These 2 smoked a cigarette after this didn't they? pic.twitter.com/CGpnHsoHd2

— kc2fargo (@kc2fargo) August 3, 2022

The outcome of the Kansas vote is the headline.. The turnout and the margin is the politically significant story.

— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) August 3, 2022

It's possible the margin for "No" in red Kansas will be a resounding double digits, a sign of just how unpopular overturning Roe v. Wade is nationally.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 3, 2022

That’s a lot of “opinion” coming from supposedly non-biased election analysts (except Fineman, who is an open hack), but I digress. The logic goes that because Kansas, which has a Democrat governor and is a notoriously schizophrenic state, voted to keep some abortion protections in its state constitution, that shows that abortion is a top issue that will deliver unexpected blue victories in the mid-terms.

Color me very skeptical of that being a good read. The amendment in question had several problems. For starters, it was incredibly badly written. Seriously, go read it yourself and see if you can easily ascertain what a “yes” and “no” vote means. Now, take whatever momentary confusion you may have had and extrapolate that to millions of people entering a voting booth perhaps never having read it before under pressure to quickly cast a vote. Secondly, the amendment was terribly marketed by its supporters, with Democrats spending gobs of out-of-state cash to ensure its defeat.

But even if we assume none of that matters and that the vote on the amendment was 100 percent a reflection of pro-choice views in Kansas (namely, that a majority want to preserve first trimester abortions), that still misses the most important factor at play. Namely, there is a big difference between people getting to vote directly on a very specific issue and people choosing between two candidates with a myriad of views on a myriad of policies and problems.

During the last major election, affirmative action was canned in California after a referendum vote. Did that mean that Californians voted for Republicans writ large because they rejected Democrats’ otherwise rabid support of affirmative action? No, they didn’t, because again, there’s a difference between a single issue vote and an actual election between two breathing human beings who have to give an answer for dozens of issues.

Yes, what happened in Kansas isn’t good news for the pro-life position. It’s also not highly indicative of some sea change rushing in to save Democrats in November. With the amendment in question, a subset of abortion protections were on the ballot. With the coming races in the general election, inflation will be on the ballot. Foreign policy will be on the ballot. The economy will be on the ballot. The border crisis will be on the ballot. You get the idea. All of those things don’t suddenly cease to be impactful to voters because Democrats got a marginal win on a pro-life amendment in a state that is not nearly as socially conservative as it is often portrayed.