Jodi Enda
Kamala Harris has changed the face of the upcoming presidential election. She also appears to be changing the face of this year’s electorate.
Even before accepting her party’s nomination Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, polls showed that Harris’s candidacy was motivating large swaths of previously unenthused Americans to engage in the election and, if the trend holds, to vote. With her in the race, the electorate is likely to be younger, more female and more supportive of abortion rights than it would have been with President Biden as the Democratic nominee, polls have found.
“Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, compared to Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, is a sea change in overall motivation,” said Melissa Williams, executive director of a Super PAC for EMILYs List, which recruits, trains and finances Democratic women who support abortion rights. In the eight days after Biden withdrew from the race and passed the torch to Harris, the motivation to vote among people in five battleground states jumped 42 points, from 37 percent to 79 percent, according to a poll conducted for EMILYs List and released during the Chicago convention.
The shift in enthusiasm was even greater among women, especially women between the ages of 18 and 44. Only 33 percent of all women and a moribund 18 percent of those under 45 had been motivated to vote when Biden was still in the race. Since Democratic candidates need a strong showing from women to overcome Republicans’ traditional dominance among men, that augured poorly for the president’s reelection chances. Once Harris replaced him as the likely nominee, women’s motivation to vote shot up 49 points to 82 percent, EMILYs List reported. Women under 45, meanwhile, showed an astounding 57-point increase, to 75 percent.
The same poll, conducted in the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, found that in the first week of her race, Harris demonstrated that she is much more likely than Biden to win votes from those newly motivated women. Fifty percent of female respondents said they supported her, compared to 39 percent who said they backed Biden before he dropped out in July. Again Harris showed the greatest gains among younger women. Slightly more than half—52 percent—of women under 45 said they backed her, compared to just 30 percent who supported Biden.
At the same time, Harris maintained Biden’s level of 37 percent support among men. “She’s 11 points better among women without losing a single vote among men,” said Jill Normington, whose firm conducted the poll.
“The gender gap is on steroids right now,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
Harris is reaping benefits from her leadership on abortion rights, even though the bulk of Americans don’t necessarily associate her with the issue yet. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of people who identify as “strongly pro-choice” told pollsters they would vote for the vice president, compared to 60 percent who said they favored Biden. “She is a much better messenger on one of the key issues of this election cycle,” Normington said.
In sharp contrast to previous national elections, abortion will weigh heavily on this presidential contest, the first since the Supreme Court sent abortion decisions back to the states two years ago. The candidates could not be further apart.
Former President Trump glorifies his role in overturning Roe v. Wade by nominating three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices. But most Republicans, who have long worked to limit or prohibit abortion, are shying away from the issue because it is likely to cost them votes. A full 85 percent of respondents told Gallup in May that abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances, compared to 12 percent who said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
Harris and the entire Democratic Party are positioning themselves as champions of women—the only group of Americans ever to have lost a constitutional right.
The party put abortion front and center on each of the four nights of its convention. During prime time, speaker after speaker attacked Trump for failing women and girls. Elected officials and candidates pledged to fight to restore abortion rights nationwide. And several women and their partners shared emotional, scary, personal stories illustrating the challenges and dangers wrought by states that have banned or restricted abortion.
Like many Democratic women on hand for Harris’s Thursday night convention speech, Pamela Castellana, of Melbourne, FL, dressed in suffragist white from head to toe. The only color in her ensemble was the blue message on her white sash, declaring, “VOTES FOR WOMEN.”
Castellana, chair of the Brevard County Democratic Party, said she feels confident that abortion “will get more people out to vote from all parties.” That will be particularly true in states like Florida, which have abortion initiatives on their ballots. “It will help the party that cares the most about women’s freedom to make decisions about their health care, and that’s the Democratic Party today,” she said.
Normington echoed that sentiment. Abortion is “the number one best thing that we can say to the voters. It is the most persuasive thing,” she said. “It is important in urban communities, suburban communities, in rural communities, among voters at the oldest of the spectrum and the youngest end of the spectrum. It helps in the middle of the ideological spectrum, and it helps our base.”
The Democratic Party’s base is made up of many groups, but it starts with women. In 2020, 57 percent of women and 45 percent of men voted for Biden, a 12-point gender gap, according to exit polls. (Numbers vary depending on the poll, but not significantly.) Trump won the support of just 42 percent of women, but a majority (53 percent) of men.
In other words, women put Biden in office.
But not all women. Biden won over just 44 percent of white women, compared to a full 90 percent of Black women and 69 percent of Latinas and Asian American women.
This same pattern has existed for decades. When Democrats win the presidency, it is usually because of their support among women.
Not only do women vote for Democrats more than do men, they register to vote and cast their votes in greater proportions.
And because women make up the majority of the population, the voting booth is one place where they can wield more power than men.
