The majority of U.S. presidential contests since 2000 have included a major-party nominee who was not white or male. This year, for the first time, two Black women are running for the Senate, an institution that in 200 years has had only two elected Black female members. Across the United States, roughly a quarter of state legislators are Black, Asian, or Hispanic.
Do the ethnicity and gender of candidates still matter to American voters? The answer is mixed, but probably less than they mattered before.
Polls show a gender gap in preferences for the two presidential candidates. Regardless of ethnicity, majorities of women back Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. Among Black and Hispanic men, however, the former president and the Republican Party have gained ground since previous elections.
Former President Barack Obama admonished Black men last week for not supporting Vice President Harris because of her gender. That premise may be only partially correct. Terrance Woodbury, president of Hit Strategies, a polling firm focused on minority voters, sees an ongoing realignment of Black, Hispanic, and working-class white men based on common economic concerns.
“Democrats have experienced erosion … amongst Black men in every election since Barack Obama exited the political stage” in 2016, he told The New Yorker. “This is not just a Kamala Harris problem. This is a Democratic Party problem.”
One party’s problem may be democracy’s gain. During her short candidacy, Ms. Harris has focused far more on economic proposals and character issues than on her gender and ethnicity.
“We’re not going to lead with identity in the same way that Hillary Clinton did” in 2016 when she was the nominee, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, which supports women of color in political leadership. She told The Associated Press that candidates must now demonstrate that “You have a heart for people who you’re not like … but deserve to be served by government and deserve representation.”
That approach echoes a lesson learned most recently in Mexico, which elected its first female head of state in June. In recent decades, as women there have achieved a record of expertise in leadership qualities and policy, the country’s still male-dominated culture has softened. The new president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is an engineer, climate scientist, and former big-city mayor with a proven record in reducing violent crime.
When a recognition of higher – or even spiritual – qualities “has prevailed,” observed Annie Knott, an American contemporary of the women’s movement a century ago and an early worker in the religious movement behind this news organization, “woman has been accorded her rightful place, at least to the extent of having an opportunity to prove her fitness for sharing in the heroic task of elevating” the human race.
Voters in this U.S. election may be recognizing that qualities of character and ideas define a candidate’s identity rather than identity defining those qualities. Many democracies have already moved in that direction.