Kamala Harris and the Glass Cliff

There is much to understand about the 2024 U.S. presidential election and the resounding defeat that American voters handed to Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. A thorough-going assessment is needed, backed by more data—including better data than pollsters have provided yet. Still, seventy-two hours after the vote and three and a half months since Vice President Harris stepped into the race following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal under pressure from Democratic leaders and donors, several things are clear. 

Democratic strategist James Carville’s quip about the 1992 election, “It’s the economy, stupid,” remained as valid as ever. Forty-five percent of voters said their financial situation was worse than four years ago and did not feel that the Democratic party had adequately responded to those concerns. While Harris offered proposals to address price-gouging by grocery stores, an acute shortage of affordable housing, and the cost of raising children, voters were unpersuaded given the toll that high inflation had already taken on their household budgets. In a Rose Garden speech after the election, President Biden acknowledged that much of the job-creating legislation he sponsored to build infrastructure, semiconductor factories, and green energy, would take years to take full effect. 

Underlying this is a much bigger concern for the Democratic party: although Harris laid out more specific economic remedies than Trump, a class divide appears to be leading many Americans to believe that the party does not listen to them, respect them, or care about their priorities. Democrats will want to deeply explore and analyze this issue, including how significantly those views are shaped by exposure to inadequate or biased information sources. But it seems clear that to win future elections, the party will need to address the fact that a majority of non-college graduates have moved away from the Democratic party in decisive numbers: 56 percent of voters without a college degree voted for Trump, according to Edison Research exit polls. White voters without college degrees voted for Trump in even higher numbers (66 percent). Latino voters, particularly men, also moved away from the Democratic party in this election. 

The results of exit polls, which will be refined in later analysis, also revealed that a majority of all women voters (53 percent) voted for Harris, but in smaller numbers than for Biden in 2020 (57 percent) and fewer than needed to offset the larger numbers of men (55 percent) who voted for Trump. A pivotal role was once again played by white women, the largest single bloc of voters, 53 percent of whom voted for Trump, replicating their preference for him in the two previous elections. This fall-off in the women’s vote is puzzling as it occurred despite agreement on the issue of abortion, a life-or-death issue which featured strongly in Harris’s campaign. Two-thirds of the American electorate agree with the Democratic party’s position and support abortion in all or most cases. Voters in seven states underlined this fact by enshrining abortion rights in state constitutions, to hedge against possible further federal action to restrict those rights, provision of abortion pills by mail, and punitive measures against those who travel or support travel for those needing abortions.   

This brings us to one of the most troubling questions about the election, which is whether the United States is still not ready to elect a woman president. It is important to examine closely whether and to what degree voters rejected Harris’s historic candidacy because she is a woman or because she is a Black woman. Neither Edison Research nor the Associated Press, two of the largest election-day polling efforts, asked any version of that question. The responses would not in any event have revealed the role that hidden or unconscious bias may have played. However, two-thirds of voters who told the Edison pollsters that they considered “the ability to lead” to be the most important personal trait picked Trump, versus one-third who chose Harris for that reason. This might indicate a gendered perception of leadership, and if so, it would reflect previously documented preference for leaders who are men. The latest worldwide Gender Social Norms Index, based on the World Values Survey, for example, has documented a prevalent and persistent bias against women political leaders and women’s political equality. This 2023 survey found that in the United States, women are even more biased against women leaders and women’s equality than men (37.78 compared to 33.19 percent). 

Other polls show that support for gender equality is decreasing, particularly among men. And it would not be surprising, given the nature of the campaign run by the Republican ticket, which featured a constant barrage of demeaning, sexist, and racist comments about Harris – including the vice president-elect calling her “trash” in his final rally – if the post-election analysis documents an upsurge in bias. The rallies featured T-shirt vendors doing a brisk trade in T-shirts, calling Harris a ho and a tramp, and the president-elect amplified social media posts about her that contained lewd and profane comments and depictions. Both men dismissed complaints about the slurs, characterizing them as “jokes.” 

This question is vital for those of us interested in ensuring that women have a level playing field to compete for the top job, and all political positions, to participate fully in democratic governance. Unlike half of the world’s countries, the United States does not have either legislated mandatory quotas or voluntary party quotas for legislative seats, which ensures that women’s voices and perspectives contribute to the formation of policies and laws that pertain to women and men alike. But politicians and activists in both the Democratic and Republican parties have made concerted efforts to increase women candidacies for office—including E-PAC formed by Republican House Conference leader Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who has also noted that women should be part of the party leadership to open those gates to power. 

A final consideration as efforts to understand this election’s outcome continue: Harris’s campaign, conducted over a short three months, deserves to be credited for skillful execution under extraordinary circumstances. Once tapped for the job, she had little time to lose to mount an eleventh-hour rescue mission for the Democrats. It was a classic case of a woman leader being thrust into a glass cliff” situation, a term first coined to address how most women came to be appointed CEO. Faced with a company/party/country in freefall, a highly qualified woman is tapped to rescue a situation that might well be unsalvageable. This was the fate of Carly Fiorina at Hewlett Packard, Teresa May in the United Kingdom, and Kamala Harris in 2024. 

As of July 22, President Biden’s favorability rating was 41 percent, and his disapproval rating was 58 percent. Harris had played the dutiful vice-president, the first woman in that role, but failed to receive the kind of exposure and credit that might have established her with voters before this Hail Mary moment. Yet she plunged in with energy, coherent and temperate language, and a smiling demeanor as she relentlessly repeated her main message to a polarized country: “More unites us than divides us.” Despite being baited by Fox’s Bret Baier to condemn Trump voters, she passionately defended their freedom of choice as the hallmark of democracy. She refused to take on gendered attacks and firmly rejected any suggestion that voters should make choices based on gender, race, or any other identity. Harris secured the support of Democratic party delegates in forty-eight hours, raised over a billion dollars, organized an army of volunteers in a stunning ground game, and stumped tirelessly in venues packed with enthusiastic followers until the last hour of the campaign. Her policies, fashioned on the fly, had specificity and inclusivity beyond any proposal offered by her opponent. Most of all, Harris displayed civility, empathy, and a commitment to the rule of law that serves as a model for the days ahead, as all those who love this democracy can appreciate.