Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign came and went almost like a fever dream. In just 100 days, she clinched the Democratic nomination, found a favorable running mate in Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, released an ambitious economic plan to address Americans’ concerns and — most importantly, it seemed — reinvigorated a Democratic base that President Joe Biden’s candidacy had left disaffected.
But her whirlwind of a presidential bid wasn’t enough. President-elect Donald Trump won the electoral college as well as the popular vote. Harris conceded the election shortly thereafter, telling supporters gathered at her alma mater Howard University in Washington, D.C., that she remained dedicated to the fight for the United States and its democracy. She retreated from the spotlight almost as quickly as she had come into it, returning to confirm her opponent’s victory.
Meredith Turner, a Cuyahoga County councilperson and Ohio delegate at the Democratic National Convention, remembers Harris’ campaign fondly, applauding how she pulled off her White House bid and made history as the first woman of color — specifically of South Asian and Afro-Caribbean descent — to be nominated as a presidential candidate.
“She Black-womaned — she did what we do,” Turner, who is Black, told Salon in a phone interview. “She ran an exquisitely inclusive, diverse campaign. Our platform was solid. It was one of inclusion, and it was forward thinking.”
Turner said that she still revisits her pictures and videos of moments from the DNC in August, those memories helping to keep her motivated in the wake of Trump’s win. While she said she intends to continue working across the political aisle in Ohio to deliver returns for its citizens, she has also decided to take a step back from collective organizing.
“I don’t see the benefit of that right now,” she said. “I think we need to get in these schools, we need to start talking to the next generation of voters. As a policymaker — we need results for the American people. I’m moving away from the activist and becoming more of the advocate.”
As the nation inches toward Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Democrats are reflecting on and re-evaluating how to win back voters in the wake of an electoral loss that data suggests was ultimately a referendum on their effectiveness as a party. While the majority of white Americans voted for Trump in 2024 as they did in 2020, a decreased share of voters of color in each demographic except Black voters chose the Democratic presidential nominee, according to exit polls.
Still, women of color remained crucial supporters and organizers in the voter mobilization effort for Harris and the Democratic Party this election cycle, in part because of what Harris’ candidacy would come to represent.
“For women of color — who are often behind the scenes and not considered a strong runner, or not allowed to step up into the light — that was a moment of pride,” said Patricia Campos-Medina, a former U.S. Senate candidate for New Jersey and a longtime labor organizer.
Harris’ candidacy will inspire other women across the country to take on the mantle and run for leadership positions, argued Campos-Medina, also the president of Latina Civic, a nonpartisan political action committee seeking to boost Latina candidates.
“That’s what she did,” she said. “She was able to show us a way to say, ‘Yes, I can.’ That transforms the heart and your instincts about how you can do things.”
Over the summer, Campos-Medina was among the 7,500 Latinas who convened two “Latinas for Harris” fundraising Zoom meetings, which came amid a spate of organizing calls hosted to boost Harris’ candidacy and rally supporters around her.
The Win With Black Women advocacy organization led the charge with an initial call that counted 44,000 Black women among its participants and raised $1.6 million in just one night in July. Organizers went on to host calls targeting other demographics, including Black men, South Asian women and white women, each amassing thousands of participants and leading the Harris campaign to raise $200 million in its first week.
Together, those efforts, organized in large part by women, helped push Harris toward record fundraising numbers while energizing key factions of the Democratic base ahead of her official nomination in late August. That electricity, however, didn’t carry over into the election itself.
Harris lost the popular vote to Trump by a mere 1.5%, which amounted to just under 2.3 million votes out of more than 152 million cast. But a recent analysis of Associated Press VoteCast data by political strategist and former AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer noted that Harris failed to mobilize the critical mass of anti-Trump voters that catapulted Biden to his electoral victory in 2020.
About 19 million people who voted for Biden in the 2020 election did not turn out for Harris in 2024, Podhorzer estimated, noting that Trump won the same share of the eligible voter population as he did four years ago. Fifteen million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump this election cycle than in 2020, which “suggests a lot of missing ‘anti-MAGA but not pro-Democrat’ voters,” Podhorzer writes.
Edison Research exit polling data showed that, among those who did vote, the state of democracy and the economy were the two most important issues motivating their presidential choices. A majority of polled voters said the economy was “not so good” or “poor,” with 70% of those voters choosing Trump. Of the 32% of voters who said the economy was the most important issue influencing their choice, 81% cast a ballot for Trump.
In many ways, then, this election was more about punishing the incumbent party over inflation and the hole in their wallets than it was about choosing Trump and standing behind his policies, said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist who researches voter participation at Emory University in Georgia.
“Donald Trump did a better job getting low-propensity Republican-leaning voters out to vote. In contrast, low-propensity Democratic voters did not show up in this election,” Gillespie told Salon in a phone interview.
“I think it was consequential that Donald Trump consistently was perceived as the stronger candidate on economic issues,” Gillespie added. “And I think, here in this election, perception matters more than reality.”
Edison exit poll data showed Asian-American voters, though they overall voted for Harris at 55%, increased their support for Trump this election cycle by 6% compared to 2020. While Latino voters also selected Harris by 51% — down 14% from their support for Biden in 2020 — Trump increased his share of Latino men’s support by 18% compared to four years earlier, with Latina women increasing their support by 9%.
Though initially thought to have swayed toward Trump, Black men’s voting patterns remained largely the same between the election cycles, with final exit polling data showing that Harris received only 2% fewer votes from the demographic than Biden did in 2020: roughly 79%. Black women also showed up for the Democratic candidate at typically high rates, supporting Harris at 92%.
Gillespie said gender gaps in voting patterns within racial demographics are normal and that, outside of Black voters, other communities of color have broader variation in their partisan leanings. That fact, however, didn’t change how Black women — the most loyal cohort of the Democratic coalition — felt about the breakdown.
In the days following the election, Black women on social media took note of the racial and gender differences in votes for Harris, voicing frustration at other demographics for what they described as not pulling their weights at the polls. As a result of Harris’ loss, a wave of Black women, who felt betrayed by what appeared to be an increase in other demographics voting for Trump, would go on to declare that they would no longer be going out of their way in their organizing.
“The frustration that we’ve heard in the immediate aftermath of the election evinces a real weariness and a wariness that could impact their strategic decisions,” Gillespie said, referring to Black women’s willingness to engage in activism and coalition work with non-Black people.
Turner, the former delegate, counts herself among those wary Black women voters and organizers.
“We’re sick and tired of being workhorses for people,” she said. “I mean, we literally gave civil rights to everybody. It’s our blood, it’s our time that we’ve been putting in to make sure that there is equity and diversity and inclusion for everyone.”
Though Turner said she’s still processing Harris and the Democratic Party’s losses in November — and increasingly scared about what Trump’s incoming term could mean for the future of America — she said harnessing the energy leftover from the Harris campaign has made her more determined to define and strengthen her advocacy.
Instead of participating in protests and marches against Trump and right-wing policies, she will focus her efforts on speaking with legislators and attending local council and school board meetings, she said.
“There are people who are homeless, there are people who live in food deserts, who can’t access healthy food. There are people who can’t afford their homes, [who are] losing their homes,” she said. “We can’t give up. We can’t just give in because they’re counting on us to come up with solutions”
“We may have lost the race, but we are not defeated,” she added, echoing a theme of Harris’ concession speech.
