The surprise vote in Republican-heavy Kansas to repudiate a push for abortion bans fired shockwaves through the US political landscape ahead of November’s midterm elections, with President Joe Biden’s Democrats now seeing a glimmer of hope that they may avoid their predicted drubbing. Ever since the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy in June, US conservatives have been nervously asking whether their triumphant push to severely restrict access to the procedure — a decades-long dream — has gone too far in the run-up to the midterms. In Kansas, they got an answer. The state is a Republican stronghold, but in Tuesday’s referendum, a bid to remove abortion rights from the Kansas constitution was rejected by 59 to 41 percent, with unusually heavy turnout. Given this was the first time Americans had an opportunity to vote on the issue since the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled to overturn the half-century-old Roe v. Wade decision enshrining abortion rights, Democrats are rejoicing — and say the backlash is only beginning. “Tonight’s overwhelming defeat of the ballot referendum in Kansas shows the massive support for abortion rights among voters, and serves as a clear warning to anti-abortion politicians across the country: their time is up,” said Planned Parenthood, which lobbies for abortion access. “As the first state to vote on abortion rights following the fall of Roe v. Wade, Kansas is a model for a path to restoring reproductive rights across the country through direct democracy,” said the group’s president Alexis McGill Johnson, who also leads the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We have the opportunity to protect abortion access at the ballot box in November. We know that Kansas will not be our last fight or our last victory.” Or, as former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill told MSNBC after the vote: “This should be a big flashing signal to every Democratic candidate out there.” The November midterms, which will decide which party controls Congress for the last two years of Biden’s first term, is shaping up as rough for Democrats who even now only control the legislature by a few votes. Blamed by voters for soaring inflation — at a four-decade high — and widespread pessimism in the messy aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, Democrats are forecast to lose at least the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate.