Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have also drawn tens of thousands of supporters to their recent rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
Although things could change dramatically over the next two-plus months, there is a real possibility that the United States may finally elect its first female president.
But in polling that we conducted in August 2024, after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, we found that sexism is still a powerful force in American politics.
Yes, the scars of the 2016 campaign – in which sexism played a key role in Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Trump – are still fresh for Democrats. But many hope that America has changed and has become more accepting of women in leadership roles.
Harris’ gender, this argument goes, won’t be a significant deterrent for voters.
On the surface, our recent nationally representative survey of 1,000 American adults supports this, with 51% of Americans agreeing with the statement: “America is ready for its first African American female president.” Only 23% of Americans disagreed.
Even so, some Republicans appear to think they can win by making gender an issue in the campaign. This is apparent in the sexist rhetoric that Trump and other Republicans are using when talking about Harris.
Trump, who has a history of making sexist statements, asserted that foreign leaders would regard Harris as a “play toy,” referred to her as unintelligent, and is now commenting on her appearance. Both The Associated Press and The New York Times have reported – based on unnamed sources – that Trump has also called Harris a “bitch” in private, although Trump’s spokesman denied he used that term.
In a similar sexist vein, Trump allies have attempted to turn Harris’ past romantic relationships into campaign issues, with one conservative commentator on Fox Business News crudely labeling Harris the “original hawk tuah girl,” an obscene sexual reference.
Will such attempts to exploit sexism as an electoral strategy backfire? Or, after all these years, might it still be out of reach for a woman to overcome sexist stereotypes and win the highest office in the United States?
We are political scientists who study the role of identity in American politics and who conduct polls that explore Americans’ views on gender and the extent to which sexism still pervades the nation.
We conducted two national polls this year – one in January 2024 when Biden was still in the race, and the other in August 2024, after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. For each poll, we surveyed 1,000 American adults 18 and older and asked about their thoughts on the election, their policy views and their attitudes toward various groups in society.
With the change at the top of the Democratic ticket, we can better assess the impact of sexism on vote choice in the presidential election by comparing the results from January, when the race featured two male candidates, with August, when Harris entered the race.
In both surveys, we first asked respondents which candidate they would vote for if the presidential election were held today.
To measure sexism, we then asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of three statements that express prejudice, resentment and animus toward women, or what political scientists call “hostile sexism.” The statements in the “hostile sexism” battery are: “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men”; “Women are too easily offended”; and “Women exaggerate problems they have at work.” Greater agreement with these statements indicated more sexist views.
We also measured respondents’ demographics – including age, gender, race, education and income – their political attitudes and identities, and their racial views.
Due in part to Trump’s sexist rhetoric throughout his campaigns and presidency, sexist attitudes have become closely linked with whom individuals support for president. On average, more sexist individuals have tended to prefer Republican candidates in recent elections.
Thus, even in our January poll when Biden was the Democratic nominee, sexism was strongly correlated with support for Trump. When we examined a head-to-head matchup between Biden and Trump, the more individuals agreed with the statements measuring hostile sexism, the more likely they were to prefer Trump over Biden.
Of those who most strongly disagreed with the statements measuring hostile sexism, 73% supported Biden, while approximately two-thirds of those scoring highest on the sexism scale supported Trump.
Taking into consideration other factors that influence support for Biden – partisanship, ideology, racial attitudes, education, economic views and so forth – we found that those with the least sexist views had an 83% chance of supporting Biden, while those with the most sexist views had a 17% chance of doing so.
Pollsters found that negative attitudes toward women make people much less likely to support Kamala Harris for president in 2024.
Westend61/Getty Images
If sexism depressed individuals’ support for Biden’s candidacy, does that mean Harris faces no additional penalty in terms of lost support for her candidacy? Hardly.
Hostile sexism, as we measured it, costs Harris votes.
While sexism mattered in January, it mattered more in August once Harris had taken over the Democratic ticket.
In a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump, 89% of those in the lowest third on the sexism scale – meaning those who disagreed most with the statements measuring hostile sexism – support Harris compared with 11% for Trump. On the other hand, only 18% of those scoring highest on sexism support Harris, versus 82% for Trump.
When we take into account other considerations that influence whether individuals prefer Harris or Trump, our findings are even more striking. The least sexist respondents have a 92% chance of saying they will vote for Harris. But the most sexist respondents have only a 4% chance of supporting her.
What this means is that, while sexist attitudes influenced individuals’ presidential preferences when Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee, they have a greater effect now that Harris is the Democratic candidate.
Since Harris seems to be narrowly leading Trump in the polls, why should we care about the influence of hostile sexism in the election?
To answer this question, imagine a world in which hostile sexism doesn’t influence attitudes toward presidential candidates who are women. Our findings imply that, in such a world, Harris’ lead over Trump might be larger. Put simply, hostile sexism is helping to make the election closer than it would otherwise be.
Sexism has long played a powerful role in influencing Americans’ voting behavior and attitudes toward political issues. This is especially so today, given the high political importance of gender-related issues such as abortion, contraception and LGBTQ+ rights.
Our analysis shows that people with negative attitudes toward women are much less likely to support Harris for president. Whether the Harris campaign can successfully navigate this reality is still to be determined.
Adam Eichen, PhD Student, Political Science, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor, Political Science, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass Amherst Poll, UMass Amherst
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Those electors, along with 15 others, drew criticism after submitting their names as electors for Pennsylvania in December 2020 and casting votes for then-President Trump, even though Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote. But unlike similar groups of alternate or “fake” electors in other swing states in 2020, the Pennsylvania slate avoided legal repercussions because of a caveat they included in the certificate documenting their vote.
Of the five electors appearing again on this year’s slate, three who spoke to Votebeat and Spotlight PA indicated they would be open to doing the same this year if they felt there was a similar legal dispute over the results.
“I honestly believe any electors for either party would do that,” Poprik said.
Pennsylvania, like most states, allocates its presidential electors according to who wins the popular vote. This year, the winning candidate’s electors will meet Dec. 17 to cast their votes.
One elections expert said people who participated in a 2020 elector scheme shouldn’t be allowed to do so again this year.
“It is the voters who determine elections — not ‘fake electors’ who attempt to upend the results of a fair election,” said Lindsey Miller, director of strategic research at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit made up of lawyers, election experts, and researchers that focuses on vote-counting and certification.
“Those who participate in election fraud should be held accountable, not given another bite at the apple,” Miller said.
In the United States presidential election system, each state is represented by a certain number of electors based on its population. Electors are citizens of the state whose vote determines who wins the presidency. In 2020, Pennsylvania had 20 electoral votes. This year it has 19.
Each political party selects a slate of electors before the general election. Once the winner of the state’s popular vote is determined, the governor authorizes that candidate’s slate to cast their votes in the Electoral College (except in two states, Nebraska and Maine, which award some of their electoral votes proportionally and can split them between candidates). Each state’s electors then submit a certificate of their votes to Congress, which accepts and counts those electoral votes on Jan. 6 of the year following the presidential election. A presidential candidate needs 270 or more electoral votes to win.
Because Joe Biden won the popular vote in Pennsylvania in 2020, his slate of electors were chosen to be part of the Electoral College, and Congress counted the state’s electoral votes for him. But a slate supporting Trump also convened and cast purported electoral votes.
According to reporting from The New York Times and other news organizations, as well as Votebeat and Spotlight PA interviews with participants, the plan to convene alternate electors was organized by the Trump campaign.
Lawyers for the campaign, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, appointed a “point person” in each state to help organize the alternate electors, according to the Times. In Pennsylvania, that person was state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who reportedly needed assurances that the plan was legal.
However, two of the electors — Sam DeMarco and Charlie Gerow — said they mainly interacted with Trump attorney James Fitzpatrick.
On Dec. 14, the alternate GOP electors met in the offices of Quantum Communications, Gerow’s Harrisburg-based public affairs firm, to cast votes for Trump. Pennsylvania law requires that the electors meet in the state capital. Biden’s electors also met in Harrisburg to cast their votes on this day.
Unlike the Republicans in some other states, Pennsylvania’s GOP electors added an important caveat to the certificate they signed, saying that the votes they were casting should be counted only if a court found that they were the “duly elected and qualified electors.”
That likely shielded them from the legal consequences faced by participants of similar plots in Michigan and Arizona. But it was unlikely anyway that the alternative GOP slate could emerge as qualified electors.
Many of Trump’s lawsuits challenging Pennsylvania’s results had concluded by Dec. 14. Some of the original Trump electors, such as Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Lawrence Tabas, also declined to sign the certificate either due to concerns over its legality or because they recognized Biden as the legitimate winner, according to the final report of Congress’s January 6 committee, which investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol on the day the electoral votes were tallied.
Votebeat and Spotlight PA sought comment from the five 2020 GOP alternate electors who are electors again this year to ask them what they would do if they felt there was again a dispute over the results.
Khare and Reilly both disputed that the 2020 document they signed was an “alternate” slate, citing the caveat the electors added about the courts. Poprick also said the caveat was a “big” sticking point for the group.
“We were unanimous in saying we don’t have authority, so we made it contingent,” Reilly said. “If I am a 2024 elector and I am asked to cast a contingent vote, and if it’s legally proper, I will do so again.”
Reilly added that under “no circumstances” would he cast a vote for a candidate who was not certified and had “no path to victory.”
Khare said that in 2020, the alternate electors were not trying to evade the law and that the election was still “in dispute.”
When asked if he would sign a similar alternate slate this year, Khare said, “This is a hypothetical, and in politics, we do not answer hypothetical questions. It depends on what happens.”
Khare added that in 2020 things were “a mess” and that he didn’t expect that scenario this time because “people are aware of election integrity.”
Poprick also said she would be open to again putting her name on an alternate slate of electors.
“If the circumstances were the same and there were pending legal matters that had to be adjudicated, and you had to meet by that date, I would,” she said.
Comfort and Bachenberg did not immediately return phone messages or emails requesting comment.
Miller, of Informing Democracy, said the public should remain vigilant about efforts to weaponize misinformation, undermine the vote-counting process, and attack certification.
“These efforts will fail,” she said. “We remain committed to identifying any officials who may pose a threat to fair elections this November so that they may be monitored and held accountable for every step of the post-election process.”
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
