 "US did not elect a woman president, again. Is it misogyny?")
Kamala Harris failed to break the ultimate glass ceiling in American politics, losing the United States presidential elections to her Republican rival Donald Trump. If she had won, the Democrat would have scripted history, becoming the first female President of the US and the first Black and South Asian woman to hold the post.
Harris’ defeat to Trump, a convicted felon, has come as a shock for her Democratic Party and her supporters. She is also the second woman to lose the US presidency to him in eight years, after Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Harris’ rout has also raised questions about whether it was American misogyny that sealed her fate, or something else. While we have explored why she lost to Trump in this story , let’s take a look at how gender played a role in the US elections.
How Americans voted
The US election results show a clear gender divide. While women favoured Harris, over half of the male voters went with Trump. Exit polls showed women preferred the Democrat by 10 points and men picked the Republican by the same amount.
According to the Associated Press (AP) VoteCast, Harris got 55 per cent of women’s votes compared to Trump’s 43 per cent, between the ages of 18 and 44.
Among women aged 45 years and older, the Democrat candidate secured 51 per cent votes than Trump’s 47 per cent.
White Americans overwhelmingly voted for Trump , with the former US president gaining 57 per cent support compared to Harris’ 41 per cent, as per a BBC report.
Notably, Harris was only 5 points behind Trump in securing the votes of White women. The Republican’s lead among White men dropped from 23 points in 2020 to 20 in 2024, reported CNN.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsHarris did not have a significant advantage among young voters (18-29 years old), with her receiving 52 per cent of the votes compared to Trump’s 46 per cent.
Black voters have mostly supported Democrats for decades and this was visible this time, too.
As per the AP exit poll, Harris got 80 per cent of the Black vote, a 10 percentage points decline from Biden’s in 2020.
Trump performed better with the Black community this time, winning 20 per cent of the votes, a rise from 13 per cent in 2020.
Was America not ready for a woman president?
The US has never elected a woman president in over 200 years. It did not break the cycle this time either.
Gender played a big role in the 2024 presidential election. Many voters were not convinced that Harris was ready for the job just because she is a woman, a narrative also fanned by Trump.
As per Hindustan Times (HT), Rebecca, a White woman in her early 30s in Pennsylvania said in October, “I believe men and women are equal. Except in one context. When you need to intimidate a foreign leader and project strength, you want a man.”
“And when you have a third world war approaching, and I believe that we are at a dangerous moment, I would prefer a strong man like Donald Trump to be in charge,” she added.
Some say that Harris, who launched her campaign only in July after Joe Biden ended his re-election bid, failed to communicate her stand on major issues. She reversed several of her left-wing stances and flip-flopped on immigration policy, noted Sky News.
The Democrat believed she could woo women with her support for reproductive rights. Harris made abortion rights a central plank of her campaign. The US Supreme Court ruling in 2022 overturned Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion and galvanising women across the country. Harris was counting on this to propel her to become the first American woman president. While women did rally behind her, it did not provide her the boost she had hoped for.
Despite abortion rights being stripped away in many states, white women did not come out in support of Harris en masse.
Exit polls showed that White women without college educations voted mostly for Trump, while Harris was backed by white college-educated women.
The other racial factor that worked against her was the dwindling support among Black and Latino men. Polls showed last month that Trump has made inroads with Black male voters.
About 77 per cent of Black men voted for Harris against Trump’s 21 per cent. Last month, former US President Barack Obama had urged Black men to go out and vote for Harris.
“And you are thinking about sitting out? Part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said at the time.
It seems they did not listen.
On Harris, a Black man in his early 20s told HT, “A woman can’t lead America. It is a man’s job. She will have a nervous breakdown. Women get emotional. How will she decide what to do when we have to fight wars or negotiate with foreign leaders?”
Trump has gained the Latino vote. While Harris beat him in attracting Latino voters (56 per cent to 42 per cent), he gained significant ground with the group compared to 2020.
The Republican leader saw a rise in support among Latino men, with 50 per cent voting for Harris and 47 per cent for him. On the other hand, 60 per cent of Latino women preferred Harris and just 38 per cent chose Trump.
Harris would have created history if she had won the US election. But she chose not to emphasise this fact like Hillary Clinton had.
“Well, I’m clearly a woman,” the US Vice President said in an interview with NBC last month. “The point that most people really care about is can you do the job and do you have a plan to actually focus on them.”
Trump won despite being him
Trump’s win is baffling for many. He has openly made sexist remarks and has a history of belittling women.
At least 17 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, with the allegations including rape, groping and unwanted kissing. Last year, a jury found him liable for sexual abuse. Trump denies all accusations against him.
His campaign against Harris was full of sexist comments, calling her stupid and weak. His VP pick, JD Vance, went a step ahead and called his Democratic rivals “childless cat ladies”.
Towards the end of his campaign trail, Trump announced he would protect women, “whether the women like it or not.”
This rhetoric had a purpose. Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, told The Washington Post that it may appear illogical to make “what seem like potentially sexist statements with five days left in a campaign with the gender gap at a historic high,” but “the answer is that he gains men while he loses women.”
As journalist and feminist campaigner Julie Bindel noted in her Al Jazeera Opinion piece, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement focused that Harris should not become president as she is a woman, “she is morally, physically and emotionally weak and not equipped to lead the “strong and manly” American nation at this moment of crisis and hardship.”
Experts say it was Trump who played the “gender card” in the 2024 White House race. Speaking to The Washington Post, Susan Faludi, the feminist author of Backlash, said, “Harris didn’t play the gender card; Trump did.” She said the Democratic candidate was “pretty pitch-perfect” during her truncated campaign that made her defeat “so much worse for future generations of aspiring female politicians.”
Trump did not just win the presidency but also the popular vote, something he failed to do in 2016.
Meredith Ralston, Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University, wrote for The Conversation that the US voted for “hegemonic masculinity, a cultural valorisation of stereotypical male traits, and Trump’s endless and regressive belittling of women and “feminine” men won the day”.
With inputs from agencies
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