Ohio's abortion-related ballot vote: Takeaways and political fallout

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Republicans suffered their latest electoral setback on a vote related to abortion, this time over a referendum in Ohio on Tuesday, leaving party operatives who spoke with ABC News saying the same thing: The GOP still hasn't figured out how to talk about the issue.

The conservative-led effort in Ohio would have raised the threshold for future changes to the state constitution from 50%-plus-one to 60%. It failed by a 14-point margin.

Citing comments by a leading Republican in the state who said the change was an effort to curb future abortion access, opponents of the effort linked the vote to an election question later this year over whether to add abortion protections to the Ohio constitution.

The defeat compounds similar results since last year that were about or associated with abortion in other states, included in typically Republican-leaning terrain like Kansas and Kentucky.

With Ohio, specifically, some strategists argued there may have been obstacles with the nature of the proposal.