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Voters had the chance this election to break the highest glass ceiling in American politics by electing Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president. Instead, they returned Donald Trump to the White House, a comeback that relied on significant -- even somewhat improved – support among women.
Some female voters on Wednesday mourned the missed opportunity to send a woman to the Oval Office and wondered when, if ever, it might happen.
“I am just aghast,” said Precious Brady-Davis, a Black transgender woman who’d just won a two-year term on a Chicago-area water management board — but her joy in that was tempered. “I am disappointed in my fellow Americans that, once again, we did not elect a qualified woman to the presidency.”
Those who supported Trump — like Katherine Mickelson, a 20-year-old college student from Sioux Falls, South Dakota — said the race came down to values and to issues like the economy, not gender. Even Harris herself sought her place in history without dwelling on her gender.
“While I think a lot of women would like to see a female president, myself included,” Mickelson said, “we aren’t just going to blindly vote for a woman.”
Despite the history-making potential of Harris’ campaign, she wasn’t able to expand on President Joe Biden’s 2020 support among women to cement a win, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Fifty-three percent of women supported Harris, compared with 46% for Trump — slightly narrower than Biden’s advantage among them in 2020.
The prospect of electing the first female president didn’t rank high as a motivator for voters. Only about 1 in 10 voters said the fact that Harris would be the first woman was the single most important factor for their vote, while about one-quarter said it was an important driver, but not the most important.
Denise Martin in Georgia had a grim view: “I really feel like the majority of Americans still aren’t ready for a woman. They are so short-sighted.” That included, she said, some fellow female voters.
Women were more likely than men to say electing the first female president was at least a factor in their vote, VoteCast showed, though few said it was the main driver and about 4 in 10 women said it wasn’t a factor.
Black women were especially motivated by the potential for the first female president — about a third said it was the most important factor.
Maya Davis theorized that Harris’ identity as a Black and South Asian woman “absolutely” played a role in her defeat. As a Black woman herself, the 27-year-old North Carolina attorney said she’s constantly forced to prove herself.
“I don’t think there’s anything she could have done differently unfortunately,” she said of Harris. “Maybe not be a woman.”
Female supporters of Trump, 78 — who adopted a hypermasculine campaign style, used sexist tropes and vowed to protect women “whether they like it or not” — said they found his rhetoric perhaps unfortunate or hyperbolic, but less troubling than concerns about the economy, immigration and abortion.
Krissy Bunner of Greenville, South Carolina, called Trump a “promoter of women” and said the future is “so much brighter” for them because Trump was elected.
“He does so much, you know, for us,” the 56-year-old said. She described women who favored Harris as misled by the media, and said Trump’s stringent border policies and stance on barring transgender athletes from women’s sports would benefit all women.
Virginia King, 19, of Dallas, spoke about Trump’s unscripted nature. “He’s just kind of outspoken about what he thinks and what he does, whereas other people hide it,” she said. “It’s probably not ideal, but it doesn’t make me not support him.”
Other women found the former president’s bombast ominous and feared a second Trump term would further threaten their rights two years after his Supreme Court appointees helped overturn the right to abortion.
“All of women’s protections are going to go away if you don’t protect the basic fundamental issue of democracy to begin with,” said retired teacher Mary Ellen Brown, 66, of Newtown, Pennsylvania. Brown said she dressed in black Wednesday and feared her family was losing faith in their country.
After Harris stepped into the race in July, Trump doubled down on banter that many found paternalistic – and worse — as he tried to close the gender gap. He also offended many by calling Harris “stupid” or “lazy.” His running mate, JD Vance, called the vice president “trash.”
The discourse didn’t bother Nina Christina, a North Carolina nurse more worried about feeding her children. Christina, 35, voted for Trump and said she just hopes to avoid being “underwater.”
“It shouldn’t be this difficult to survive in everyday life,” said Christina, adding that Harris already had a chance to fix the economy.
Harris, 60, bypassed the suffragist white worn by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and rarely spoke about the glass ceiling during a frenzy of energetic campaign stops since becoming the Democratic nominee in July.
Her supporters welcomed the upbeat mood after what they saw as a series of setbacks for women’s progress in recent years: a workload surge during the pandemic, when children were sent home from school in 2020; the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022; and the steady drumbeat of #MeToo cases, some lodged against Trump.
In Minneapolis, 90-year-old Audrey Wesley -- who’s voted in more presidential elections than she can count off the top of her head -- said she’d been hoping a Harris victory would usher in a bipartisan resurgence.
“I can’t believe a man that has done this much against the law can even be running for president,” Wesley said, referring to the litany of legal battles, including sexual assault allegations, Trump brings to the office. “Our system is broken.”
Relatively few voters said Trump’s legal cases were a major factor in their decision-making this election, according to AP VoteCast. Only about a quarter of Trump voters said the legal cases involving Trump were at least an important factor, but about 8 in 10 Harris voters did.
Some women voters experienced the gender gap within their own homes or families — women like Dee Bertino, 55, of Moorestown, New Jersey, who spent her first date with her husband arguing about trickle-down economics. Twenty-five years and two sons later, she mailed in a ballot for Harris while her husband voted for Trump.
Bertino said her top concern was women’s rights, but she also bemoaned the lack of civility she felt Trump had unleashed. Her husband, Bob, 58, with whom she runs a sexual health company, also supported abortion rights, she said, but felt the economy, immigration and other issues were more important.
Having a woman president is "not that big" for me, Bertino said. “But I truly believe that our democracy is facing its largest threat in history, and Trump must be stopped.”
Bertino and her husband hotly debate politics and the election. That’s not true for Martin, in Peachtree City, Georgia,
Martin, 61, is a flight attendant. Her partner is a pilot. He voted for Trump, for the third time. She voted for Harris. Speaking about politics is fraught and painful, and they know to avoid it.
When Clinton lost in 2016, Martin said, she was beside herself and couldn’t talk to her partner for days. This year, Martin had hoped to privately celebrate the ascension of the first female president, a woman she supported not because she was a woman, but because she was the right candidate: “so thoughtful, so smart, so well-spoken.”
But the news did not seem good, so she went to bed. She awoke to see the race called for Trump, and grew tearful. Among her chief concerns: the future of democracy; health care, especially reproductive care for young women; respect for science; climate policy; and the United States’ standing in the world.
As Clinton herself has said, Harris didn’t need to emphasize the gender issue, because the public has grown more accustomed to seeing female candidates. Seven women, representing three political parties, ran for president in 2020.
”We now don’t just have one image of a person who happens to be a woman who ran for president – namely me,” she told the AP in September. “Now we have a much better opportunity for women candidates, starting with Kamala, to be viewed in a way that just takes for granted the fact that, yes, guess what? She’s a woman.”
Trump voter Elizabeth Herbert, a retired homeschool teacher from Wake Forest, North Carolina, saw Trump as a strong leader and family man. She would still like to see a woman president. She just didn’t embrace Harris.
“I think a woman could do a great job as president,” she said. “I don’t think she is the right woman.”
Some women who’d voted for Harris told AP they were too stunned to speak about the news. “I’m devastated,” texted one; “I’ll need a little time,” another wrote. Others said they were forcing themselves to move forward.
“We’ll get through today and then get some rest,” Martin said, looking forward to playing trivia with her friends later.
“The world is going to change, but we have to find our way in it. We can’t let this ruin us.”
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Associated Press reporters Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia; and Michael Goldberg in Minneapolis contributed.