Red State Voters Say No to Vouchers Despite Trump’s Support for School Choice

Red states that Donald Trump won in this election also voted to reject school choice measures, despite Trump and most Republicans in the states championing the issue.

According to a report by ProPublica, vouchers continue to be an unpopular measure to voters, even Republicans. In this election, voters in Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado rejected school choice measures on state ballots, despite Trump winning easily in Nebraska and Kentucky.

In Kentucky, voters overwhelmingly rejected (65% to 35%) a proposal that would have allowed state lawmakers to allocate public tax dollars to support students at private schools.

“Kentucky voters have once again definitively stated that public dollars belong only in public schools,” Gov. Andy Beshar said in a statement.

In Nebraska, both red and blue counties voted to reject a vouchers program that would have stirred to offset the costs of private K-12 education. And in Colorado, voters rejected a measure that would have added a “right to school choice” to the state constitution. Critics argued the language might have allowed the passage of a universal vouchers program.

ProPublica noted that when put to voters, a school voucher program has never passed in the U.S. Despite this, red states have used their majorities in their legislatures to pass voucher programs, and when some GOP lawmakers oppose the measure, governors often seek to oust them in primaries.

Passing school vouchers is a top Republican priority, as many of their billionaire donors are proponents of the measure. Just in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has received millions from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass to pass vouchers. Abbott aggressively campaigned against incumbents who opposed the measure and managed to oust them in the primaries. Now, he said that he has the numbers to pass vouchers.

However, it seems that despite Abbott’s priority to pass vouchers, it is still an unimportant topic to voters. Many of the incumbents backed by Abbott and that shoes only purpose was to be an additional vote for vouchers, did not mention the measure at all in their campaigns.