Kamala Harris Didn’t Lose Because She’s a Woman

Seth Masket: “2024 actually provided us with something resembling counterfactual evidence: there were two presumptive Democratic nominees. Lest we forget, Kamala Harris jumped in the race on a rescue mission, replacing a Joe Biden who was flailing after his June debate performance against Trump and appeared on track to lose by several points. Harris immediately improved the prospects for the Democratic ticket, turning a very likely loss into a competitive race. That is, a woman of color subbed in for a white man and was doing better. Now, if your response is, ‘Sure, but Biden was old and was bad on inflation/abortion/Gaza/etc.,’ fine, but you’re conceding that sex and race were not the most important features of this contest.”

“Additionally, while there are plenty of examples of sexism running rampant in the American political system (just look at the composition of the Senate!), women getting fewer votes just because they’re women is not really one of them…”

“Finally, there were the political science fundamentals-based forecast models of the election, which overall predicted a very close race, but one with Trump having a slight advantage in the Electoral College. The state-based forecast models predicted this election result precisely. Again, these are models that don’t include any information about the identity of the candidates — they’re just based on the state of the economy, wars, party registration, etc. All that suggests that Harris did about what any Democratic nominee would have done.”