The 2024 presidential election was historic in many ways, but one trend did not buck the norm: the gender gap. Indeed, despite Kamala Harris becoming the first Black and South Asian woman to win a majority party’s nomination, the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, and clear attempts by the Harris campaign to win over white Republican women voters, “gender differences in vote choice in the 2024 elections were remarkably similar to recent presidential elections” (CAWP 2024). This essay highlights the long-term ideological and demographic shifts among party constituencies that can help to explain why Republican women cast their vote for Donald Trump, even in a uniquely gendered political landscape.
While Republican women voters are generally more moderate than Republican men, they have remained rather consistent in their support for Republican candidates. The Harris and Trump campaigns both made attempts in 2024 to court moderate white Republican women through their campaign rhetoric, messengers, and policy stances. While Harris slightly increased her support among white women compared to Biden in 2020, a majority still voted for Donald Trump (CAWP 2025a). At the same time, Harris lost support from women at the intersection of other racial, ethnic, age, and religious identities that have been crucial for the success of Democratic candidates. Given existing literature on gender, race, and party politics, I argue that it is unsurprising that Harris’s appeals to white Republican women failed to widen the gender gap. As scholars, we must continue to emphasize that women are not a voting bloc by highlighting the complex nature of women’s partisanship.
Appeals to White Republican Women on the 2024 Campaign Trail
White suburban women have been a target demographic for presidential candidates in recent election cycles. A 2024 KFF poll found that a plurality (47%) of suburban women identify as Democrats, while 18% identify as Independents, and 35% identify as Republicans (Kirzinger et al. Reference Kirzinger, Kearney, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Despite some narratives that women may be leaving the Republican Party, polls have not shown a decline in the percentage of women who identify as or lean Republican over the past several decades (CAWP 2025b). In fact, between 2013 and 2023, the percentage of women who identify as Republicans increased by five percentage points from 21% to 26%, while the percentage of women who identify as independents decreased by seven percentage points from 34% to 27% (PRRI 2024). Republican women in the electorate do tend to be more ideologically moderate than Republican men (Barnes and Cassese Reference Barnes and Cassese2017), and Republican suburban women support abortion access to a greater extent than their rural counterparts (Kirzinger et al. Reference Kirzinger, Kearney, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Given this, it is perhaps expected that the Harris campaign would make explicit and consistent appeals to moderate white Republican women over the course of this election.
Most notably, Harris campaigned with former Republican congresswoman and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, stumping together in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Cheney has been an outspoken critic of Trump since 2020, when he first made false claims that the presidential election was stolen. As I have written in the past, Cheney is not a moderate Republican, even by today’s standards. Prior to being ousted as House Republican Conference Chair in 2021, she voted in line with Trump 92.9% of the time and her messaging “aligned with the Republican Party’s decades-long strategy of mobilizing white voters by tapping into racial fears — including echoing Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric” (Wineinger Reference Wineinger2021). Nevertheless, her consistent criticisms of Trump resulted in her removal from party leadership and a loss in her 2022 primary election. While campaigning with Harris, Cheney attempted to appeal to Republican women in 2024 who might view Trump as uncivil, untrustworthy, and a threat to democracy (Abdul-Hakim, Farrow, and McDuffle Reference Abdul-Hakim, Farrow and McDuffle2024). Acknowledging the current social and political pressures that many voters face, Cheney and Harris reminded Republican women that their votes are private and urged them to “do the right thing” (Abdul-Hakim, Farrow, and McDuffle Reference Abdul-Hakim, Farrow and McDuffle2024).
Echoing this message was a viral ad from Vote Common Good, a progressive advocacy group dedicated to mobilizing religiously-motivated voters. The ad, voiced by Julia Roberts and titled “Your Vote, Your Choice,” attempts to appeal to white Republican (and Republican-leaning) women concerned about reproductive rights. It shows a white woman, dressed in patriotic attire, entering the polling place with her husband. After giving another white woman a knowing glance, she secretly casts her vote for the Harris/Walz ticket. “In the one place in America where women still have the right to choose,” Roberts says, “you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know. Remember: what happens in the booth stays in the booth” (Vote Common Good 2024).
These gendered appeals were paired with a significant shift to the right on immigration policy and rhetoric; compared to the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform, the policies emphasized by Harris, Democratic leadership, and the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform focused more heavily on immigration enforcement and border security. According to a preelection poll, women voters identified the economy (40%), threats to democracy (22%), immigration (13%), and abortion (10%) as their top policy priorities (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Despite attempts to mobilize Republican women on these issues, 95% and 91% of Republican women approved or strongly approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and immigration, respectively. A smaller but still significant majority (78%) also approved or strongly approved of Trump’s handling of abortion policy (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024).
In addition to Democratic appeals, the Trump campaign also strategically reached out to moderate white Republican women. More specifically, Trump shied away from antiabortion rhetoric throughout his campaign; by October, he had made a promise to veto a federal abortion ban (Fernando Reference Fernando2024). Trump also leaned into trans-exclusionary policies and rhetoric, framing a ban on trans women in sports as a policy intended to “protect” women. Reframing traditionally conservative policies as “pro-women” has been a common tactic used by Republican politicians over the past decade to combat the allegation of a “Republican war on women” (Wineinger Reference Wineinger2022). Beyond that, the history of trans-exclusionary practices in women’s sports has been steeped in racist and classist notions of “womanhood” that have long favored white cis women (Moyer Reference Moyer and Magrath2022).
These appeals to moderate white Republican women, on both sides of the aisle, did little to sway them in one direction or the other. The gender gap between white women and white men was similar to that in 2020 and was actually smaller than in 2016 (CAWP 2025c). And in line with previous elections, a majority of white women (53%) continued to support Donald Trump. In the following section, I discuss how the literature on gender, race, and party politics helps to explain these trends and why Democratic efforts to appeal to Republican women often fall short.
Gender, Race, and Party Politics
While much media attention was given to these attempts to court white Republican women in the months leading up to Election Day, scholarship on gender, race, and party politics suggests we should not have been surprised that these strategies had little overall effect on vote choice. In recent decades, social identity — and in particular, race and racial attitudes — have become increasingly correlated with partisanship (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019; Mason Reference Mason2018; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck Reference Sides, Tesler and Vavreck2018). These shifts in national party constituencies began in the 1930s, as Black voters gradually turned toward the Democratic Party (Schickler Reference Schickler2016); in the 1960s, diverging stances between the two major parties on the issue of civil rights resulted in white southern voters increasingly sorting themselves into the Republican Party (Maxwell and Shields Reference Maxwell and Shields2019). The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 further crystallized for voters key racial differences between the parties. As such, there was a significant increase in voters sorting themselves into the two parties based on racial attitudes: voters with lower levels of resentment, regardless of racial identity, sorted into the Democratic Party, while voters with higher levels of resentment sorted into the Republican Party (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019). This shift was even stronger following the 2016 election and Trump’s explicit anti-immigrant rhetoric (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck Reference Sides, Tesler and Vavreck2018).
In addition to racial attitudes, gender and religion have also played a role in shaping the composition of the two major parties. As the Republican Party has worked to mobilize white southern voters, Republican elites have not only tapped into racial resentment and white consciousness (Jardina Reference Jardina2019) but have also made appeals to the Christian Right and to anti-feminist activists (Maxwell and Shields Reference Maxwell and Shields2019). Such strategies have resulted in fundamentally different voter bases, with the Democratic party functioning as a coalition of “racial, religious, economic, and sexual minorities” and Republicans earning most of their support from “social majorities or pluralities such as white voters, Protestants, suburbanites, and (heterosexual) married voters” (Grossmann and Hopkins Reference Grossmann and Hopkins2015, 125–26).
These shifts in party strategy also led to the emergence of a gender gap in presidential elections since 1980, the year the Republican Party’s national platform abandoned its support of the Equal Rights Amendment (Carroll Reference Carroll and Mueller1988; Reference Carroll, Carroll, Fox and Dittmar2021). The gender gap widened in the 1990s as the two parties began to diverge more explicitly on the issue of abortion. For over four decades, a larger proportion of women than men have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. And since 1996, a majority of women voters have favored the Democratic candidate in presidential elections (CAWP 2025c).
That said, gender politics scholars have long emphasized that women are not a monolith. While the gender gap can give us some insight into women’s partisan preferences, it is essential to examine this gap through an intersectional lens. A majority of white women, for instance, have supported the Republican presidential candidate in every presidential election since 2000 and in all but two of the past 19 election cycles (Junn and Masuoka Reference Junn and Masuoka2024, 63). While gender certainly plays a role in presidential vote choice, white Republican women (like all women) are also making decisions from the standpoint of their religious beliefs and/or racial interests.
Many of the policy and rhetorical appeals made by Donald Trump and Republican elites speak to Republican women not simply as women, but as white Christian women. Given the Republican Party’s electoral strategies over the past several decades, it makes sense that many Republican women hold traditional views about gender roles, have greater levels of hostile sexism compared to Democrats, and are more likely than Democrats to believe that the United States has become “too soft and feminine” (Banda and Cassese Reference Banda and Cassese2022; Cassese and Barnes Reference Cassese and Barnes2019; Deckman Reference Deckman2022). These gender and racial attitudes have significant effects on voters’ evaluations of Democratic and Republican candidates at the top of the ticket, regardless of the candidate’s gender or racial identities (Knuckey and Mathews Reference Knuckey and Mathews2024).
These shifts in party coalitions help explain why Democratic efforts to mobilize white Republican women seem to have fallen short. As noted previously, one gendered appeal Harris and Cheney made together on the campaign trail was the importance of democracy and civility. While it is true that Republican women express low tolerance for incivility in politics, Melissa Deckman finds that they “are no less likely than Republican men to rate Trump’s behavior as uncivil – and are much less likely to do so than Democratic women or men” (Deckman Reference Deckman2022, 431). And while Republican women identified “threats to democracy” as a top concern this election cycle (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024), their definitions of these threats likely aligned with Trump’s, which were rooted in claims of potential voter fraud, censorship of conservative commentators, and weak border security.
Even on the issue of reproductive rights, in a post-Roe era, moderate Republican women seem to not have been swayed. While support for abortion rights increased (including among Trump supporters) since 2020, those views had little effect on vote choice (Edison Research 2024). One explanation for this is that abortion measures were on the ballot in 10 states in 2024, including the swing states of Arizona and Nevada — where both Trump and abortion rights won (Guarnieri and Leaphart Reference Guarnieri and Leaphart2024). This, paired with Trump’s promise to veto a federal abortion ban, likely lessened the perceived threat to moderate Republican women’s gendered interests, thus allowing them to vote for Trump for reasons that aligned with their other identities.
Turning Out for Trump
In general, Republican and Republican-leaning women have remained relatively consistent in their support for Republican presidential candidates. While Harris did slightly increase her support among white women by two percentage points compared to Biden in 2020, a majority (53%) of white women continued to support Trump in 2024 (CAWP 2025a). Moreover, compared to Biden in 2020, Harris’s overall share of the women’s vote decreased by four percentage points (CAWP 2025a). While her support among Black women remained consistent, Harris lost significant support from Latinas, young women, Muslim women, and lower income women (CAIR 2024; CAWP 2025a; Xiao et al. Reference Xiao, Murray, Vincent, Burn-Murdoch and Suss2024). These losses reflect broader demographic trends among these groups, regardless of gender.
Perhaps most significantly, the Harris campaign failed to turn out Democratic voters, winning over 6.2 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Turnout rates were also lower in Democratic strongholds and among demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic (Bender Reference Bender2024). As Junn and Masuoka (Reference Junn and Masuoka2024) note, “The act of voting for candidates of a party and indeed the decision to turn out to vote are rational responses to signals political parties send to voters” (22). Women voters are making decisions that reflect their gendered interests, but they are also voting at the intersection of other social identities, including their race, ethnicity, religion, class, and age.
While there is no single explanation for the election results, these trends are nevertheless a reminder that women cannot be treated as a voting bloc. As scholars, we should continue to research and emphasize the complexity of women’s partisanship. It was clear, for instance, that winning over women who have already sorted themselves into the Republican Party was always going to be an uphill battle for Harris. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for future Democratic candidates is that appealing to white Republican women, while itself is not a losing strategy, must not come at the expense of alienating the groups — including and beyond women — who have long comprised the base of the Democratic Party.
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The 2024 presidential election was historic in many ways, but one trend did not buck the norm: the gender gap. Indeed, despite Kamala Harris becoming the first Black and South Asian woman to win a majority party’s nomination, the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, and clear attempts by the Harris campaign to win over white Republican women voters, “gender differences in vote choice in the 2024 elections were remarkably similar to recent presidential elections” (CAWP 2024). This essay highlights the long-term ideological and demographic shifts among party constituencies that can help to explain why Republican women cast their vote for Donald Trump, even in a uniquely gendered political landscape.
While Republican women voters are generally more moderate than Republican men, they have remained rather consistent in their support for Republican candidates. The Harris and Trump campaigns both made attempts in 2024 to court moderate white Republican women through their campaign rhetoric, messengers, and policy stances. While Harris slightly increased her support among white women compared to Biden in 2020, a majority still voted for Donald Trump (CAWP 2025a). At the same time, Harris lost support from women at the intersection of other racial, ethnic, age, and religious identities that have been crucial for the success of Democratic candidates. Given existing literature on gender, race, and party politics, I argue that it is unsurprising that Harris’s appeals to white Republican women failed to widen the gender gap. As scholars, we must continue to emphasize that women are not a voting bloc by highlighting the complex nature of women’s partisanship.
Appeals to White Republican Women on the 2024 Campaign Trail
White suburban women have been a target demographic for presidential candidates in recent election cycles. A 2024 KFF poll found that a plurality (47%) of suburban women identify as Democrats, while 18% identify as Independents, and 35% identify as Republicans (Kirzinger et al. Reference Kirzinger, Kearney, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Despite some narratives that women may be leaving the Republican Party, polls have not shown a decline in the percentage of women who identify as or lean Republican over the past several decades (CAWP 2025b). In fact, between 2013 and 2023, the percentage of women who identify as Republicans increased by five percentage points from 21% to 26%, while the percentage of women who identify as independents decreased by seven percentage points from 34% to 27% (PRRI 2024). Republican women in the electorate do tend to be more ideologically moderate than Republican men (Barnes and Cassese Reference Barnes and Cassese2017), and Republican suburban women support abortion access to a greater extent than their rural counterparts (Kirzinger et al. Reference Kirzinger, Kearney, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Given this, it is perhaps expected that the Harris campaign would make explicit and consistent appeals to moderate white Republican women over the course of this election.
Most notably, Harris campaigned with former Republican congresswoman and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, stumping together in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Cheney has been an outspoken critic of Trump since 2020, when he first made false claims that the presidential election was stolen. As I have written in the past, Cheney is not a moderate Republican, even by today’s standards. Prior to being ousted as House Republican Conference Chair in 2021, she voted in line with Trump 92.9% of the time and her messaging “aligned with the Republican Party’s decades-long strategy of mobilizing white voters by tapping into racial fears — including echoing Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric” (Wineinger Reference Wineinger2021). Nevertheless, her consistent criticisms of Trump resulted in her removal from party leadership and a loss in her 2022 primary election. While campaigning with Harris, Cheney attempted to appeal to Republican women in 2024 who might view Trump as uncivil, untrustworthy, and a threat to democracy (Abdul-Hakim, Farrow, and McDuffle Reference Abdul-Hakim, Farrow and McDuffle2024). Acknowledging the current social and political pressures that many voters face, Cheney and Harris reminded Republican women that their votes are private and urged them to “do the right thing” (Abdul-Hakim, Farrow, and McDuffle Reference Abdul-Hakim, Farrow and McDuffle2024).
Echoing this message was a viral ad from Vote Common Good, a progressive advocacy group dedicated to mobilizing religiously-motivated voters. The ad, voiced by Julia Roberts and titled “Your Vote, Your Choice,” attempts to appeal to white Republican (and Republican-leaning) women concerned about reproductive rights. It shows a white woman, dressed in patriotic attire, entering the polling place with her husband. After giving another white woman a knowing glance, she secretly casts her vote for the Harris/Walz ticket. “In the one place in America where women still have the right to choose,” Roberts says, “you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know. Remember: what happens in the booth stays in the booth” (Vote Common Good 2024).
These gendered appeals were paired with a significant shift to the right on immigration policy and rhetoric; compared to the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform, the policies emphasized by Harris, Democratic leadership, and the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform focused more heavily on immigration enforcement and border security. According to a preelection poll, women voters identified the economy (40%), threats to democracy (22%), immigration (13%), and abortion (10%) as their top policy priorities (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024). Despite attempts to mobilize Republican women on these issues, 95% and 91% of Republican women approved or strongly approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and immigration, respectively. A smaller but still significant majority (78%) also approved or strongly approved of Trump’s handling of abortion policy (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024).
In addition to Democratic appeals, the Trump campaign also strategically reached out to moderate white Republican women. More specifically, Trump shied away from antiabortion rhetoric throughout his campaign; by October, he had made a promise to veto a federal abortion ban (Fernando Reference Fernando2024). Trump also leaned into trans-exclusionary policies and rhetoric, framing a ban on trans women in sports as a policy intended to “protect” women. Reframing traditionally conservative policies as “pro-women” has been a common tactic used by Republican politicians over the past decade to combat the allegation of a “Republican war on women” (Wineinger Reference Wineinger2022). Beyond that, the history of trans-exclusionary practices in women’s sports has been steeped in racist and classist notions of “womanhood” that have long favored white cis women (Moyer Reference Moyer and Magrath2022).
These appeals to moderate white Republican women, on both sides of the aisle, did little to sway them in one direction or the other. The gender gap between white women and white men was similar to that in 2020 and was actually smaller than in 2016 (CAWP 2025c). And in line with previous elections, a majority of white women (53%) continued to support Donald Trump. In the following section, I discuss how the literature on gender, race, and party politics helps to explain these trends and why Democratic efforts to appeal to Republican women often fall short.
Gender, Race, and Party Politics
While much media attention was given to these attempts to court white Republican women in the months leading up to Election Day, scholarship on gender, race, and party politics suggests we should not have been surprised that these strategies had little overall effect on vote choice. In recent decades, social identity — and in particular, race and racial attitudes — have become increasingly correlated with partisanship (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019; Mason Reference Mason2018; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck Reference Sides, Tesler and Vavreck2018). These shifts in national party constituencies began in the 1930s, as Black voters gradually turned toward the Democratic Party (Schickler Reference Schickler2016); in the 1960s, diverging stances between the two major parties on the issue of civil rights resulted in white southern voters increasingly sorting themselves into the Republican Party (Maxwell and Shields Reference Maxwell and Shields2019). The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 further crystallized for voters key racial differences between the parties. As such, there was a significant increase in voters sorting themselves into the two parties based on racial attitudes: voters with lower levels of resentment, regardless of racial identity, sorted into the Democratic Party, while voters with higher levels of resentment sorted into the Republican Party (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019). This shift was even stronger following the 2016 election and Trump’s explicit anti-immigrant rhetoric (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck Reference Sides, Tesler and Vavreck2018).
In addition to racial attitudes, gender and religion have also played a role in shaping the composition of the two major parties. As the Republican Party has worked to mobilize white southern voters, Republican elites have not only tapped into racial resentment and white consciousness (Jardina Reference Jardina2019) but have also made appeals to the Christian Right and to anti-feminist activists (Maxwell and Shields Reference Maxwell and Shields2019). Such strategies have resulted in fundamentally different voter bases, with the Democratic party functioning as a coalition of “racial, religious, economic, and sexual minorities” and Republicans earning most of their support from “social majorities or pluralities such as white voters, Protestants, suburbanites, and (heterosexual) married voters” (Grossmann and Hopkins Reference Grossmann and Hopkins2015, 125–26).
These shifts in party strategy also led to the emergence of a gender gap in presidential elections since 1980, the year the Republican Party’s national platform abandoned its support of the Equal Rights Amendment (Carroll Reference Carroll and Mueller1988; Reference Carroll, Carroll, Fox and Dittmar2021). The gender gap widened in the 1990s as the two parties began to diverge more explicitly on the issue of abortion. For over four decades, a larger proportion of women than men have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. And since 1996, a majority of women voters have favored the Democratic candidate in presidential elections (CAWP 2025c).
That said, gender politics scholars have long emphasized that women are not a monolith. While the gender gap can give us some insight into women’s partisan preferences, it is essential to examine this gap through an intersectional lens. A majority of white women, for instance, have supported the Republican presidential candidate in every presidential election since 2000 and in all but two of the past 19 election cycles (Junn and Masuoka Reference Junn and Masuoka2024, 63). While gender certainly plays a role in presidential vote choice, white Republican women (like all women) are also making decisions from the standpoint of their religious beliefs and/or racial interests.
Many of the policy and rhetorical appeals made by Donald Trump and Republican elites speak to Republican women not simply as women, but as white Christian women. Given the Republican Party’s electoral strategies over the past several decades, it makes sense that many Republican women hold traditional views about gender roles, have greater levels of hostile sexism compared to Democrats, and are more likely than Democrats to believe that the United States has become “too soft and feminine” (Banda and Cassese Reference Banda and Cassese2022; Cassese and Barnes Reference Cassese and Barnes2019; Deckman Reference Deckman2022). These gender and racial attitudes have significant effects on voters’ evaluations of Democratic and Republican candidates at the top of the ticket, regardless of the candidate’s gender or racial identities (Knuckey and Mathews Reference Knuckey and Mathews2024).
These shifts in party coalitions help explain why Democratic efforts to mobilize white Republican women seem to have fallen short. As noted previously, one gendered appeal Harris and Cheney made together on the campaign trail was the importance of democracy and civility. While it is true that Republican women express low tolerance for incivility in politics, Melissa Deckman finds that they “are no less likely than Republican men to rate Trump’s behavior as uncivil – and are much less likely to do so than Democratic women or men” (Deckman Reference Deckman2022, 431). And while Republican women identified “threats to democracy” as a top concern this election cycle (Kearney et al. Reference Kearney, Kirzinger, Valdes, Hamel and Brodie2024), their definitions of these threats likely aligned with Trump’s, which were rooted in claims of potential voter fraud, censorship of conservative commentators, and weak border security.
Even on the issue of reproductive rights, in a post-Roe era, moderate Republican women seem to not have been swayed. While support for abortion rights increased (including among Trump supporters) since 2020, those views had little effect on vote choice (Edison Research 2024). One explanation for this is that abortion measures were on the ballot in 10 states in 2024, including the swing states of Arizona and Nevada — where both Trump and abortion rights won (Guarnieri and Leaphart Reference Guarnieri and Leaphart2024). This, paired with Trump’s promise to veto a federal abortion ban, likely lessened the perceived threat to moderate Republican women’s gendered interests, thus allowing them to vote for Trump for reasons that aligned with their other identities.
Turning Out for Trump
In general, Republican and Republican-leaning women have remained relatively consistent in their support for Republican presidential candidates. While Harris did slightly increase her support among white women by two percentage points compared to Biden in 2020, a majority (53%) of white women continued to support Trump in 2024 (CAWP 2025a). Moreover, compared to Biden in 2020, Harris’s overall share of the women’s vote decreased by four percentage points (CAWP 2025a). While her support among Black women remained consistent, Harris lost significant support from Latinas, young women, Muslim women, and lower income women (CAIR 2024; CAWP 2025a; Xiao et al. Reference Xiao, Murray, Vincent, Burn-Murdoch and Suss2024). These losses reflect broader demographic trends among these groups, regardless of gender.
Perhaps most significantly, the Harris campaign failed to turn out Democratic voters, winning over 6.2 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Turnout rates were also lower in Democratic strongholds and among demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic (Bender Reference Bender2024). As Junn and Masuoka (Reference Junn and Masuoka2024) note, “The act of voting for candidates of a party and indeed the decision to turn out to vote are rational responses to signals political parties send to voters” (22). Women voters are making decisions that reflect their gendered interests, but they are also voting at the intersection of other social identities, including their race, ethnicity, religion, class, and age.
While there is no single explanation for the election results, these trends are nevertheless a reminder that women cannot be treated as a voting bloc. As scholars, we should continue to research and emphasize the complexity of women’s partisanship. It was clear, for instance, that winning over women who have already sorted themselves into the Republican Party was always going to be an uphill battle for Harris. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for future Democratic candidates is that appealing to white Republican women, while itself is not a losing strategy, must not come at the expense of alienating the groups — including and beyond women — who have long comprised the base of the Democratic Party.