In the end, Americans chose the man whose presidency led to the undoing of abortion rights over the woman who said she would fight to restore them.
And yet, in seven of 10 states, residents also voted to protect and in some cases reinstate their legal right to abortion, which is supported by the vast majority of Americans.
The seeming disconnect might be explained by the fact that many more voters were concerned about the economy, and felt they were personally harmed by inflation, than they were about abortion, according to exit polls.
Or it might be explained by the fact that the United States never has elected a woman, let alone a woman of color, to be president—and wasn’t ready to do so now.
That’s a question the exit polls did not ask.
What we know is that the majority of Americans were willing to cast their lot with a candidate who throughout the campaign and his previous term in the White House frequently invoked misogynistic, sexist and racist language to talk about American citizens and officials.
Voters chose a dark view of America that gave voice to white, male grievance over a vision of inclusivity that would have prioritized reproductive rights as well as healthcare, childcare and other issues of particular concern to women.
Americans chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris—decisively. As of late Wednesday, he was on a path to win every battleground state. And it’s not just the Electoral College this time; Trump won the popular vote as well.
In the coming days and weeks, analysts will dissect the results and voter data that is still emerging. Historians will present their own theories on why Americans gave a second chance to a former president who regularly insulted women with crass and violent language. Trump pronounced Harris a “low-IQ individual,” called Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi “evil, sick, crazy” (stopping just short of adding “bitch” to the slur) and suggested that former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney face a firing squad.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said in the waning days of the campaign. “Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
He also was patronizing to women, saying recently that he would “protect” them “whether the women like it or not.”
Trump now has defeated the only two women ever nominated to be president by a major party. He lost once, to a man.
“It’s hard to imagine that Harris’ race and gender didn’t have some impact,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.
Although Harris talked little about her chance to become the first female president, gender played a big role in the race. This was the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and Harris and Democrats down the ballot leaned into the issue. The Democratic National Convention featured women who had suffered and nearly died because of state abortion restrictions, and a plethora of national and local TV ads reminded voters that Republicans were responsible for what Harris dubbed “Trump abortion bans.” Republicans, for their part, tried to distance themselves from the restrictions. Trump settled on the falsehood that most Americans, including Democrats, wanted the decision about abortion to go back to the states.
So it did. Most states have banned or restricted abortion at some point during pregnancy. Voters, on the other hand, have opted to cast ballots in favor of broadening abortion rights. The seven states that voted to enshrine abortion in their constitutions this week double the number that have supported abortion in ballot measures. Three states—Florida, which required 60 percent of the vote to pass, and Nebraska and South Dakota, which required simple majorities—defeated similar measures Tuesday.
But while voters overwhelmingly agree with Democrats that abortion should be legal all or most of the time, a majority prioritized other issues, according to exit polls conducted for television networks by Edison Research. Just 14 percent of voters said that abortion was the most important consideration when they decided which presidential candidate to vote for. Three-fourths of them backed Harris.
There was a gender gap, as there has been since 1980, but women’s votes did not come in in big enough numbers for Harris to surmount Trump’s advantage among men in the nation as a whole and battleground states that decided the election.
Fifty-three percent of women voted for Harris and 45 percent voted for Trump. On the flip side, 55 percent of men supported Trump and 42 percent backed Harris. The pattern defied expectations that a record number of women would support the vice president. Harris, only the second woman to be nominated for president by a major party, fared worse among women than President Joe Biden did four years ago, Edison Research’s exit polls show. That year, Biden won 57 percent women’s votes, compared to Trump’s 42 percent.
Harris’s strongest base of support was among Black women, the most loyal Democratic voters. More than nine out of 10 (91 percent) backed her, while only 7 percent voted for Trump. More than three-fourths of Black men (77 percent) also favored Harris, but their support was weak compared to Black women and their vote for Trump (at 21 percent) represented a slight uptick for the Republican compared to 2020. Among Latinas, 60 percent voted for Harris and 38 percent for Trump. Latino men, on the other hand, favored Trump over Harris, 55 percent to 43 percent.
The largest segment of voters is white women, and more than half of them, 53 percent, supported Trump. Just 45 percent backed Harris. That group was driven primarily by white women without college degrees, 63 percent of whom voted for Trump. Among white women who attended college, a smaller group, 57 percent voted for Harris.
White men backed Trump by an even greater margin, with 60 percent voting for him compared to 37 percent who backed Harris. Both white men with and without college degrees voted for Trump, the latter giving him a full 69 percent of the vote.
There also were significant age differences. Men in every age group favored Trump. He got the greatest level of support from men who are primarily in Gen X, plus some of the youngest Baby Boomers. Among those men, ages 45-64, 60 percent backed Trump and 38 percent backed Harris. The youngest male voters, ages 18-29, offered Trump the weakest level of support, at 49 percent versus 47 percent for Harris, the exit polls found. (An Associated Press-NORC survey reported that a larger proportion of young men—56 percent—voted for Trump and only 42 percent opted for Harris.) Fifty-three percent of men ages 30-44 and 55 percent of men 65 and over voted for Trump.
Among women, only those ages 45-64 failed to give Harris a majority. That group split the vote, with 49 percent voting for Harris and 50 percent for Trump. Young women ages 18-29 offered the vice president the greatest degree of support (61 percent). (Again, the AP’s numbers differed, saying that 58 percent of young women backed Harris and 40 percent preferred Trump.) Fifty-four percent of women ages 30-44 and 65 and over also voted for her.
None of it was enough to help Harris break the thick and, to date, impenetrable, glass ceiling that is the American presidency.
This article was produced in collaboration with The Fuller Project, a journalism nonprofit that reports on global issues affecting women.
