U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves at supporters as she walks off stage after speaking at Howard University in Washington, DC, on Nov. 6.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Kamala Harris’s historic nomination as the first woman of colour to lead a presidential ticket and her strong support for reproductive rights were not enough to propel her into the White House and did not seem to move the needle with women voters.
The Democratic presidential nominee, who lost to Republican Donald Trump in Tuesday’s U.S. election, made abortion rights a cornerstone of her campaign following the overturning of Roe v. Wade protections in 2022.
But exit polls also showed that the economy was the top priority for women voters, including even Harris supporters.
Despite Ms. Harris’s criticisms of Mr. Trump as an authoritarian who has made offensive comments toward women, she fell short of Joe Biden’s support among women four years earlier.
Ms. Harris wasn’t able to expand on Mr. Biden’s 2020 support among women to cement a win, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters countrywide. Fifty-three per cent of women supported Ms. Harris, compared with 46 per cent for Mr. Trump – slightly narrower than Mr. Biden’s advantage among them in 2020. In the last election, Mr. Biden won 55 per cent support from women, compared to 43 per cent for Mr. Trump, according to AP.
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According to exit polls this year, Democrats also lost ground among Black and Latino voters across both genders, and Mr. Trump picked up a higher proportion of younger voters and first-time voters.
The AP polls show that women overall were more concerned with the economy and immigration than abortion rights. When it came to women who supported Ms. Harris, the economy still trumped abortion as a key policy concern. And for Trump supporters, nearly half of women viewed the economy as the top issue, followed by immigration, with only 4 per cent of women citing abortion.
Reproductive rights measures were on the ballot in 10 states, passing in seven and failing in three: Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska.
Melissa Haussman, professor emeritus of political science at Carleton University, said there was a belief that Ms. Harris’s support for abortion rights would bolster her credibility with women.
“I think there was an expectation that what happened in 2022, especially with reproductive rights on the ballot in 10 states, that that was going to help her. I think it did, but not enough,” Prof. Haussman, who is American, said in an interview.
“Again, white suburban women, particularly those say 45 and older, broke for Republicans.”
Prof. Haussman said she wished that Ms. Harris and her campaign had spoken more about measures that reduced inflation, which she believes would have helped the Democrats on the economic issue.
Kelly Dittmar, an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden and a director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics, said assuming that most women would vote for the Democrats is not correct.
“I think it assumes that all women are pro-choice, which they aren’t,” she said, adding that most pro-choice women would have been supportive of the Democrats regardless of the candidate.
While reproductive rights were among the key issues for both men and women, there were other factors at play, she said.
“Was abortion the primary motivator of their vote?” she asked. “Democracy was high up there, but then the economy and then this question that seemed to really hurt her, which was, ‘Do you like the direction that the country is going in?’ And her attachment to this administration and a perceived economic downturn and struggle clearly hurt her.”
Diana O’Brien, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said there are different ways to consider the outcome of the election, but she believes that regardless, what people will take away is that a woman candidate can’t win a presidential election in the United States.
“I think it will make it harder for women candidates in the future irrespective of what happened in this election.”
The outcome, she said, will be read as gender being a barrier to women’s ability to access the presidency in a way that will “have consequences in 2028 and beyond.”
Kelly Hall, the executive director of The Fairness Project, which focuses on passing progressive ballot measures in red and purple states, rejected the notion that having ballot measures on abortion hurt Ms. Harris.
“Almost no one is a single-issue voter on the right or the left. And the idea that one issue was going to overwhelm the entire trend of the race is just false,” she said.
With reports from Chen Wang and the Associated Press