Missouri is firmly a red state and not changing anytime soon. The thing is that most of the people here have been conditioned to believe any politician with a (D) next to their name is an evil villain helbent on murdering babies and stealing their guns. Republicans have been pushing that narrative for decades and it firmly took root and will not be easy to eliminate

However on individual issues it's harder to push the Conservative narrative. You can get any Republican candidate elected by just screaming "ABORTION ABORTION ABORTION!" but once you ask an individual voter about anything else, they won't necessarily default to the Republican opinion. People have mentioned the legalized weed initiative and that's a great example

But we also had the campaign stuff come up a few years ago and despite the Republican candidates spending like 15x the money on advertising to get people to oppose it, it still passed

Basically the people of the state are so indoctrinated they will only vote on candidates based on their parry affiliation. If a tall white man ran for Senate here and ran on a campaign of strangling puppies but was Republican, he would defeat the Democrat running on the "$1 million for every Missourian" campaign in a landslide. But once you get to individual mandates the state does still have some sense