Disappointed voters and organizers in Philadelphia say gender and racial biases contributed to Harris’ loss

When Ala Stanford’s children woke up at 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, she had to break the news: Vice President Kamala Harris had lost the presidential election. And that meant former President Donald Trump had won.

“One rolled over [and said], ‘I knew this was going to happen,’” said Stanford, a medical doctor who founded her own health equity center and is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. “The other one was like, ‘I wish I was dead.’”

Immediately, Stanford realized she didn’t have time to process her own emotions about the election.

“Whatever I was feeling in that moment, I couldn’t feel, because now I’m dealing with my children and how they’re processing this,” said Stanford.

Harris would have been the first woman of any race and the first South Asian person to hold the nation’s highest office. She lost the election, and the popular vote, to Trump, whose coalition crossed race and gender lines in unprecedented ways as he made significant headway with people of color, and netted a larger share of women’s votes.

In a concession speech at Howard University, her alma mater, Harris repeated much of the rhetoric she maintained on the campaign trail and called on her supporters to keep fighting.

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” Harris said.

Harris talked about her campaign’s intentional effort to build coalitions and community. But the coalitions Democrats have relied on for decades, along with the new ones they tried to build — communities of working-class voters, voters of color, and white female voters threatened by the rolling back of reproductive rights — fell through.

While affinity groups organized around her candidacy almost immediately after she became the Democratic presidential nominee in July, Harris rarely leaned into her own racial and gender identity on the campaign trail, and her supporters emphasized far more often Harris’ stance on policy issues rather than what it would mean to have a Black and South Asian woman as president for the first time.

As voter turnout data and exit polling trickles in over the coming days, Philadelphians who supported Harris are grappling with what her loss means for the country at large and for them personally, and are forging their ways forward.

Sadja “Purple” Blackwell, a West Philadelphia-based community organizer and independent media owner, said Black women are feeling the loss acutely.

“I think that it’s more of a distressing loss for Black women in our communities, specifically, because we did the job,” she said. “We went out and we did exactly what we were supposed to do. We got our children and our husband and our family and we did not go to the polls alone … we still ended up against a very racist, white wall.”

Despite the league of support behind her, including a built-in network of sorority sisters and fraternity brothers and labor organizations that knocked on millions of doors in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t enough to push Harris over the finish line.

“They wasn’t ready for a Black woman,” said Anton Moore, 48th Ward leader and organizer. “If you notice, she did worse than Hillary.”

Early exit polling from ABC found that at 55%, Harris had a 12-point lead among female voters in Pennsylvania, compared with 43% of women who supported Trump. Trump’s lead among men, though, was higher: 56% of men in Pennsylvania voted for the president-elect, compared with 42% who voted for Harris.

Nationally, Harris’ support among women dropped compared with Biden’s 2020 numbers. Fifty-three percent of female voters cast ballots for Harris compared with 57% for Biden in 2020, while Trump performed better among female voters than he did in 2020.

Harris’ lead among women also appears to have been lower than the 18-point advantage reflected in an October Philadelphia Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College poll.

Exit polling shows Black women were the backbone of Harris’ support. In Pennsylvania, 97% of Black women cast their ballots for Harris.

Councilmember Nina Ahmad was at Howard University in Washington, where Harris was holding her election night festivities. The mood quickly became one of “big disappointment,” she said.

As Ahmad was campaigning for Harris, she said, she emphasized Harris’ policies and that she’d be a president for all people.

“But people can’t get past that she’s a woman,” Ahmad said. “She’s not a white woman. You know, all of these things. This is why I say it’s an emotional response, voting, not logical.”

Stanford didn’t support Harris because she was Black or a woman, she said.

“I think in terms of qualifications, she, by far, was the better, better candidate,” said Stanford.

“What’s tough for those who did not support the winner is knowing that more than 50% of the people in the nation supported that person,” Stanford said of voters who supported Trump.

Voters may have chosen Trump for any number of reasons, Stanford said, but in some cases, she believes race and gender played a role.

“There are some where it has everything to do with gender and it has everything to do with the color of their skin, because some people feel that white is right and everything else is not,” she said.

In line with what Harris signaled in her concession speech, her supporters locally have already started organizing, are remaining optimistic, and are continuing their community-based work.

“It’s times like this, against evil, we have to tap into agape [love],” said Blackwell. “We have to tap into our humanity.”

Ahmad, who lives in the ultrahigh-turnout 9th Ward, said the Democratic Party needs to strategize and fix the get-out-the-vote tactics that are obviously falling short. And Moore, of the 48th Ward, is hitting the ground running on his next community outreach event.

“Next week, I’m giving out coats to kids in my neighborhood, you know what I mean,” he said. “I’m giving out Pampers and different things like that. It goes on.”