Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. And the conversation has immediately turned to race and gender. What do we know about how Black and Asian women candidates are treated by parties and voters? How does the Harris experience compare to others running for office? What does it mean for her ability to win in November and inspire a new generation of more diverse leaders? Jamil Scott has researched the unique features of Black women candidacies, from the decision to run to raising money to adapting to stereotypes. And she has also studied the increasing racialization of American elections. She tells me the typical tropes and conversations came immediately to this campaign.
Guest: Jamil Scott, Georgetown University
Transcript
Matt Grossmann: What research on Black women candidates means for Kamala Harris, this week on the Science of Politics. For the Niskanen Center, I’m Matt Grossmann. Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the democratic nominee, and the conversation has immediately turned to race and gender. What do we know about how Black and Asian women candidates are treated by parties and voters? How does the Harris experience compare to others running for office and what does it mean for her ability to win in November and inspire a new generation of more diverse leaders?
This week, I talked to Jamil Scott of Georgetown University about research on women of color candidates and what it means for Kamala Harris. Scott has researched the unique features of black women candidacies from the decision to run, to raising money, to adapting to stereotypes, and she has also studied the increasing racialization of American elections. She tells me the typical tropes in conversations came immediately to this campaign like clockwork. I think you’ll enjoy this conversational edition of the podcast where you can catch up on a lot of relevant research findings. So how common are Black women candidates and officeholders in the US, and how much is that changing over time?
Jamil Scott: Sure. So I think that one of the things we’ve seen in the last couple election cycles are more Black women being elected at the congressional level. There’s been a steady increase of Black women at the state and local level as well. So their numbers are rising, but it’s still the case that there is an under-representation story here that at last count, Black women in state legislatures were at about 5% of all officeholders. But in terms of their representation in the… Or Black women in the population more generally, Black women as Officeholders are underrepresented in relation to their population size.
Matt Grossmann: And how much is the Kamala Harris candidacy likely to affect those dynamics? What do we know about the role of exemplars in spurring political involvement?
Jamil Scott: Sure. So that’s a really great question because I think there’s been some increasing research on how political role models matter, and not just from a agenda standpoint, but also from a racial standpoint. So Eric [inaudible 00:02:28] and Bernard Fraga have a more recent article where they talked about how members of Congress running for office has implications for who runs for office at the state level. So we’ll most certainly see down-ballot effects in terms of who decides to run after this moment, just like we saw in 2016, or rather in 2018 after the election of 2016, that we saw more women running for office. So I can only assume that Kamala Harris’s will have an impact on Black women in particular thinking about their opportunities to run.
Matt Grossmann: So what do we know about the process that women of color use to decide to run for office and how different that is from others? And how well does Harris’s path from prosecutor to attorney general fit that?
Jamil Scott: Sure. So one of the things that is an important conversation that’s happening in the literature right now is about how people come to this point of deciding to run for office. So there are these traditional models about people deciding to run for office because it’s something that they’ve always wanted to do like the Bill Clinton story, if you’ve read his biography, that it was something that he thought about and he prepared for. Even Hillary Clinton has a bit of that in her biography and thinking about this prior to getting to this point of running for office. But others, and this is the model that is more often associated with women of color, is this idea that they run because there’s a problem to solve and there is something to do, something to fix. And more work is speaking to that model that women and particularly women of color decide to run because they are seeking to be problem solvers.
That’s not to say that there aren’t folks who identifies women of color, who thought of themselves as always running for office, but we tend to see that those women who are ambitious, right, or are very successful, they might decide to do something else because they can make money. So there’s more recent work that suggests that these really successful younger women of color are deciding I could be a lawyer and make a lot of money and do that, but there’s something that is bringing people to decide to run, and it’s to solve a problem. It’s because they are involved in their communities. It’s because they’re thinking about fixing something that they see as fundamentally broken.
Matt Grossmann: And how about the progressive ambition up the political hierarchy and this kind of criminal justice specific path that Harris took?
Jamil Scott: Sure. So I think that one of the things that is new or distinct about Kamala Harris’s story is that she ran for office as a prosecutor. And not all criminal justice offices are ones in which you can run for, but the ones in which you do, we don’t necessarily see as many women of color in these positions, but where we do see them, they are talking about this idea of solving a problem. In my own work in which I’ve done interviews with women who are thinking about running for these criminal justice positions, they see it as a matter of fixing a social justice problem, being able to be the decision-makers that we know prosecutors often are in deciding who gets prosecuted, what issues to pursue, and the implications for the criminal justice process. And as it relates to Kamala Harris. I think that’s a conversation that people are having particularly right now in terms of some of those decisions that she made.
And so it’s rather interesting that we’re seeing this moment where people are talking specifically about her prosecutorial history and who she chose to prosecute. So there’s a narrative here around her prosecutorial history with Black people in particular. And I think that that is an interesting and important point story to talk about, right? That we have to think here about who often is bundled into the criminal justice system and how prosecutors are decision-makers, they can decide to prosecute or not. So we’re already dealing with an unequal balance of who’s being presented to prosecute, but also there are folks who are trying to put a positive spin on her prosecutorial history in that if she was prosecuting truancy cases, it was the most egregious or she did not pursue as an example, cases against or choosing to prosecute cases that focused on LGBTQ issues in particular.
She was on the side of advocating for gay marriage, as an example, is one of the stories that are being told about her right now. So these prosecutors who are running, they’re tending to have this story about wanting to have a role in fixing the criminal justice system. But I think that with that, we also have to think about the inputs into the process that we know who often is more likely to be arrested, what types of cases are going to come up. And so prosecutors elected or not are being asked to make a decision about who to prosecute, but the numbers are already skewed from the stock.
Matt Grossmann: So Kamala Harris has just set records for quick cash infusions and fundraising, but I know that that’s not typically the pattern for Black women candidates. So talk about the general patterns that Black women face when they run for office or that women and Black candidates individually face compared to other candidates.
Jamil Scott: Sure. So I think that one of the stories that’s often told about women when they’re running is that there are no barriers when they are trying to raise money. But I think that one of the things that we often see from women is that they are what Sarah Fulton calls running backwards with their heels on, meaning that they work really hard to fundraise, and more often than not, they’re getting the small donor dollars or relying on organizations to help them fundraise. So Kamala Harris, her history is fundamentally tied to EMILYs List as an example. So in the short book that I’m working on, I start the story with how we should care about or why we should care about these organizations because they’re doing the work of helping candidates to decide to run. And her story is paramount in that because she was one of the stories that folks were thinking about when she was first running for prosecutor.
How do we help her? How do we help her fundraise those types of things? So to get back to the full part of your question and how this relates to money is that it is a small donor dollar story and also an organization story. So you have organizations like Emily’s List, like gosh, EMILYs List, and other PACs stepping out to stand in the gap for her to help her raise money. I think it was really important and fundamental that you have organizations like Win for Black Women and Win for Black Men, and even white women, I don’t know if you saw this answering the call, they raised $1 million in three hours, almost $2 million in three hours, because folks are seeing and realize the importance of dollars and small donor dollars for women in particular, but especially women of color.
And so we know that money matters, and we know that from my own research, I know that when I’ve asked office holders about what it’s like to fundraise, they often talk about how difficult it’s to get donor dollars from friends, from family, and those are the folks that we tend to think about as being donors. But if you don’t have the networks to help you donate from the four, that makes it more difficult. So we tend to see it is not that there are individuals who are giving exorbitant of money in one go, right? It’s small donor dollars that are doing the work and organizations that are undergirding these women of color to help them run. So I think there’s an intentional push here for Kamala Harris to help her raise money with small donor dollars with larger donations. It’s something that $1 million, almost $2 million was raised in three hours. That starts with people being intentional about the fundraising effort.
Matt Grossmann: So this is going to be a big question, but it’s one that we’re being asked by reporters at the moment, which is what do we really know about how Black women candidates are perceived and what they do in response to that?
Jamil Scott: Yeah. So this is a really interesting question because Kamala Harris can be perceived in, there are a number of layers to how we might perceive Kamala Harris in this moment, given her multiracial identity and her embrace in that multiracial identity. So there’s that conversation as an Asian American woman and how stereotypes might come into play in terms of how people talk about them. There are also stereotypes that often come into play when we talk about Black women, and it seems as though the media is playing into some of these stereotypes that are most often associated with Black women in their conversations about her, particularly the attacks on her are playing into some of these stereotypes. So it did not go unnoticed that JD Vance’s comments about Kamala Harris started with, “She just collected a check.” And so those types of stereotypes go to one of the most ubiquitous stereotypes that we have in American politics, which is the idea of the welfare queen and the idea that there are Black women in the American lexicon who are just accepting things from the state.
And to bring in that stereotype speaks to this idea or linking Kamala Harris to that idea, even though we know that she is a woman who is quite accomplished, has done a number of things to get her to this position, but the idea that someone can say, “She just collected a check,” raises those ideas of some of those stereotypes. We’ve also seen some conversations around her past relationships and sexual history, which brings up the stereotype of Jezebel. So now we’re sexualizing her and we’re not talking about her history, her accomplishments, et cetera, right? We’re now talking about Willie Brown, Montel Williams, et cetera, right? Which is another ubiquitous stereotype that has been around since slavery in which we’ve used to talk about Black women and not in a good way. And so with that being said, what does this moment mean for how we talk about a Black woman candidate at the top of the ticket when all these things are coming up, right?
So there is something special about this moment that we can think about, there are multiple identities that are at play, and this will be the really interesting thing for researchers to think about moving forward as we do retrospectives on this election cycle. So there are these attacks that are bringing up these negative stereotypes. There are also a number of what we call positive things that come along with these ideas around Black women, right? And so it is using these ideas around race and gender that often evoke this idea of strength, right?
So we have these stereotypes that can sometimes be perceived as negative, but can also be seen as a positive in the ways in which we see Black women be valorized in the workplace because they’re seen as very strong and capable, et cetera, seen as distinct from white women in some ways that make them seen as good candidates, positive, good executives, et cetera. And we even see some of this with the idea of what types of candidates we select in times of crisis. So there’s some work from Monica Schneider and colleagues where they talk about when people are in a cycle in which we’ve seen some not great events, a time of crisis, people look to a new and unique candidate to run.
And so that might speak to some of this excitement around Kamala Harris in this moment and this semblance of hope that is not unlike we saw with Obama in the ’08 election cycle, that this is a point of change. That doesn’t mean that the attacks won’t come, but it does mean that where we see these points of advantage of how identity can be perceived, there are also points of negativity that come along with these identities as well.
Matt Grossmann: So racial minority candidates are still able to win elections at similar rates as white candidates and women candidates are able to win at similar rates to men candidates. So there’s kind of the danger that we emphasize the stereotype so much that it seems impossible to win. On the other hand, those findings have not necessarily been interpreted to mean that the challenges aren’t there. So how should we interpret that?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so it is certainly the case that we more often see minority candidates in particular running in majority-minority districts and I think that’s a strategic choice on their part, right? They’re running where they think they can win. I think in this instance where we’re seeing a Black candidate, a Black and Indian American woman candidate run in a national level election, there are real possibilities for her to be able to win. But we also have to recognize that there are also people who are not going to vote for her at all, full stop, probably not going to vote for her.
And what that means is that her team has to be really strategic about who they are broaching, who are they approaching in terms of potential voters, right? And so it is the strategic nature of this election that I think will matter most. And her team has to be really strategic about who they’re reaching out to and the messaging that they’re using to get people on board because possible, it’s possible to win, but it’s the strategy that matters and who she’s able to bring out on election day that’ll really be the most important part of this story.
Matt Grossmann: So Harris is also being attacked for being too liberal. There are non-racial and gender considerations that come up there as in her Senate voting record and the fact that she’s from San Francisco or represented San Francisco. But of course those interact with her race and gender. So talk about ideological perceptions of these candidates and how you think it’ll come together here.
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so it is the case that she is from a very liberal state, and people tend to assume that race and gender, particularly being identified as a minority woman, makes her appear to be more liberal. But actually when we think about it, she is more of a moderate candidate, and she has some folks who are farther left ideologically who aren’t so happy with how she has moved as a candidate, as an office holder, as a Vice President, but also in the Senate.
So where we stand is that she has to walk a very fine tight rope of trying to appeal to those people who are not happy with her more moderate record, but also convince folks who perceive her identities as making her more liberal that she is more moderate as well. So it’s a very delicate balance that she particularly has to walk in trying to appeal to these multiple party constituencies, which you talk about in your book that the Democratic Party has these multiple constituencies that candidates often have to appeal to. And because of how she is perceived, these identities, and what her actual record is, she has to find the balance of appealing to those folks who are more left than her, and also convincing the folks who believe or perceive her to be more leftist that she is actually where she actually is, if that makes sense.
Matt Grossmann: So there’s also an assumption that she might have unique appeal to Black voters, to Asian American voters and to women. What do we know about that as a starting point? To what extent is that true?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so I think that there are going to be large comparisons between this election and the ’08 election where we have these conversations about what Black voters as an example are going to do, and if they were voting for Obama because he was Black. And I think that voters are even more conscious of that conversation right now. And it is certainly the case that people are going to support her because they see the importance of this moment, but it is also the case that there are voters who are not happy with her record or don’t necessarily perceive her multiracial identity as being part of the conversation of making her Black. It’s very interesting in this moment that there are these conversations that are questioning her identity and whether she’s Black enough, right? And that is not unlike the conversations that were had around Obama in ’08.
But I think what was different was that Obama had a Black wife and he was very linked into Black institutions like the Black church as an example so there were less questions being brought up, particularly because he leaned into being Black. Though he’s biracial, he was very clear about his identity. Here with Kamala Harris, she clings to both of those identities, which I think is really important and part of her story being a Black and Indian-American woman in the US. But that comes with questions for some folks about where she stands and what she will do, right? There’s a narrative about what she will do for Black people, and there’s a concern about what she will do for Black people, and some of the same concerns that we saw during the Obama presidency in his campaign, right?
So she’s facing both of those considerations at the same time, to be clear that she is, just like Obama had to be clear about in his campaign, that he’s not the president of Black America, he was the President of America. But there’s also a clear question amongst some Black voters about whether or not she will actually be thoughtful about what this will mean for Black people and what she will do. Certainly her connection to Howard University, her connection to a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, matters, and there are voters who are mobilizing for her in this moment. I think the Win With Black Women as an example was a very clear message and signal that Black women are mobilizing women, Win With Black Men, a clear symbol that Black men are mobilizing for her as well. But this is not the Obama election of ’08, the dynamics are different and I think that there are concerns amongst some voters about what her dual identities might mean for her attitudes about what issues matter.
Matt Grossmann: And will she need to make unique appeals to Black voters, to Asian-American voters and to women? And are there likely be trade-offs between those appeals and appealing to white men or folks not in those groups?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so I think that one of the things that I’m noticing in this moment is that there is a learning happening from Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. So it’s also not ’08, it is not 2016 where folks are thinking about what the moment looked like to not vote for Hillary Clinton. And so I think that one of the things that we’ll see, and one of the things we saw with white women organizing to donate money and to organize themselves to talk about what it meant to not do that and what the outcomes of the 2016 election meant for that group matter for how that group is perceiving this moment. It also matters for Asian-American folks as well, a group that we don’t often talk about because they are often not perceived as strong voters, right? But in this moment, there’s an opportunity to connect with Indian-American, Asian-American voters more generally, to get them to the polls, to do a strong reach out, to connect them to the Democratic Party in a way that hasn’t been done before.
There are voters who are going to get on board because they’re concerned about what another Trump presidency can look like. But with other voters, with white women, with Asian-American folks, with Black folks, they’re going to want to see her show up, come to the events, talk about what she’s going to do, right? So it’s not going to be enough that folks are afraid of what the Trump presidency looks like because there’s actually some support amongst the Black community for Trump. It’s not extremely high, but it’s enough that if folks decide to stay home, that it can matter, particularly in these swing states. And for white men, I think that it is important for the party to not lose that group, men more generally, right? There are these conversations being had about the Democratic Party not necessarily reaching out to men, right? So James Carville, he gave this quote, or he did an interview where he was saying that the party is not doing enough to speak to men, right? And so I think that this election cycle, there has to be-
Matt Grossmann: He put it more crudely than you, but yes.
Jamil Scott: Yes, yes. And so I think this election cycle, the Democratic Party has to think about how it’s reaching all of these constituencies that are under the tent and what that means for how their candidates go about doing what they do. It’ll be a very strategic push, and it has to be a very strategic push for the Kamala Harris campaign to reach all of those folks.
Matt Grossmann: So we’ve been talking about Harris as a Black woman candidate, but she is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian-American immigrants. So what do we know about how mixed race candidates are perceived and how the sort of sub-ethnic groups are perceived within the larger groups?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so there’s some really interesting work that’s been done by Danielle Lemmy, Sarah Cewani and Manisha Rohr where they talk about perceptions of Kamala Harris in particular. And I think that one of the things that we see with that is, the best way to say this is when voters see her as being their identity, they’re more likely to identify with her. So it is something to be said about how voters take on these cues for themselves. So in their work in particular, I mentioned Sarah, Manish, and Danielle. What they speak to is that, when Indian Americans feel like they have something in common with Kamala Harris, that’s when it matters. That’s when they’re willing to support her.
But there is at least this current of some voters being afraid of this identity politics current. And what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that voters don’t want to just… some voters don’t want to hear, “I share your identity and so I will do…” Or, “You should vote for me because I share your identity.” And at least that is the narrative that is being shared by some voters in the news, et cetera, particularly the folks who are Asian-American who being picked up in some of these news cycles. They are concerned about this identity push alone. They want to know what exactly she’ll do.
So I think that there’s a commonality and there is a personalizing that her campaign is trying to do that will be really important so that voters will see her and both of our identities and embrace her. So we’re seeing the ideas around or we’re seeing the conversations around her going to Howard, being in AKA and how that matters. And that connects her to black voters. But I think one of the things that we saw during the 2020 election that was really important was her doing these conversations or having these conversations about her relationship with her mother, with her Indian-American identity, cooking, et cetera. I think it was with Mindy Kaling that she did a whole cooking session. Those personalizing messaging and events and strategic discussions of her identity. I think those matter, instead of just saying, “This is my identity. You should vote.” It’s more of a, how can you relate to me as a candidate? And this is how you can. These stories, these experiences. This is how you can relate to me.
Matt Grossmann: And then what about relations within the Americanized racial categories? So how Chinese or Japanese Americans are likely to see an Indian-American portrayed as being an Asian-American. How black Americans are likely to perceive now that this will be the second potential black president who has one parent who is an immigrant compared to the rest of the community. So what do we know about how that will be perceived?
Jamil Scott: I think that, more generally, and we’ve known this for a long time, that the Democratic Party can do better with reaching out to Asian-American voters. And the ground game I think will be really important, just as it was in 2020, to relate to these voters. Being able to relate to all Asian-American voters is tough because we know that, as an pan-ethnic identity, there are certainly differences within the group. So there has to be a real conversation and a commitment to finding issues that brings everyone under the umbrella to want to have a conversation and be able to relate to the Democratic Party, and to Kamala Harris in particular as a candidate.
And that is a tough sell. But I think that having real conversations about immigration, being thoughtful about some of the conversations that are being had in the Republican Party about what they want immigration to look like will be really important. So maybe that is a space where we do need to juxtapose more some of these conversations that are being had about Project 2025 and what that will mean for folks who do not agree with that agenda and the implications of those types of policies moving forward. What that will do in the United States.
Matt Grossmann: You’ve also conducted research on black voter mobilization and views and, as you mentioned, so far Trump has been doing better in polls of black voters than in prior elections. And it looks like there might be an increasing gender gap among black voters, or at least it looked that way until the candidate switched. So what did you make of that trend generally? And how is Harris’ nomination likely to change it?
Jamil Scott: Sure. I think that first we do have to talk about how there are some issues with the polls. There aren’t as many black voters being included in some of these polls, and so those weights, and some of them are out of control. And the margin of error matters for these estimates for attitudes and voting. So with that being said, there is an undercurrent of folks who are supporting Trump. And I think what that means is that… particularly amongst black men. So I think what that means is, that speaks back to that point from James Carville about how the Democratic Party is being perceived. So it’s really important, again, for the Democratic Party to speak to men. To speak to the issues that men are finding important in this moment so that this group is not lost. In particular with black men, I think that there has to be these events where there is a conversation about what the group wants. And intentional reach-outs like we saw with the Win With Black Men.
There’s no secret that one of the conversations that was had about Stacey Abrams’ campaign was this conversation around, how was she relating to black men? And it’s interesting that one of her biggest critics was Killer Mike, a rapper who was saying that there is no reach-out to black men. That started some of these conversations about what the Democratic Party is doing, what this means, et cetera. So it just means that there has to be intentional pushes to talk to black men, to talk through their issues, and to not take for granted that there will be automatic support in this moment.
There’s a real risk that people might stay home. I don’t necessarily think that there is going to be a mass shift to the Republican Party but I do think there’s a real risk that people will stay home this election cycle. And so it is going to be the ground game, the attempts to mobilize that will be really important to get people to show up on Election Day
Matt Grossmann: As you know, research on black voters also suggests that social influence within the black community is influential in maintaining high levels of Democratic support and high turnout. So how is that likely to play out in the Harris campaign? Are we going to witness greater social pressure within the black community?
Jamil Scott:I think this time around there will be, because I think what is different from 2016 is that we don’t have those same voices saying, “It is okay to stay home.” There was some really prominent figures and political commentators who were saying, “It is okay. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to vote in this election cycle.” And so I think that, because folks are thinking about the implications of those moves and what that got us from 2016 to 2020, that there is a real conversation about the stakes right now and being intentional about making sure that folks do not stay home.
So we’re seeing political commentators talk about the importance of voting and the implications of things like Project 2025. I think it was really important that Taraji Henson, as an example, an actress talked about Project 2025 and that folks should think about it and look at it on the BET Awards.
And those things seem small, but it’s really important that popular folks that people know are saying, “Be aware. Look out for these things.” And it’s not just political figures who are saying, “Be aware. Look out for these things.” Because we know that people aren’t always in tune with politics. They’re not always thinking about political news, but they will pay attention if a popular star they know is saying, “This is important.”
And people are counting the days until they see a Taylor Swift show up as an example. I think people are really excited that Beyonce allowed Kamala Harris to use her music for the campaign. And so I think that’s just one more indicator of how star power beyond what we think about politics is going to matter to get people engaged.
Matt Grossmann: You’ve also looked at some at social media and some of the stuff surrounding Stacey Abrams and other figures. How does that compare to what’s been happening with the launch of the campaign, that people seem surprised by the level and diversity of social media surrounding Kamala Harris already?
Jamil Scott: I think what looks different this time is that folks have these comparison cases. I think Stacey Abrams ran a really amazing campaign in a state in which folks were not sure that there could even be a chance that voters would vote for a Democratic candidate at a mass level. And so the fact that there was a mobilization game there that was effective, that she got so close and she could have been one of our first black women to be elected as a governor, because we’ve never had one, was meaningful. But that set the stage, I think, for 2020 and the ground game that was meaningful for the 2020 election for Biden.
So I’m saying that to say that we have the advantage of history here, and people thinking about what has happened in the past and what things need to be done to get people on board this time. I think that there are moments where people didn’t necessarily see the importance of these past moments, but they’re thinking about the implications of what comes next. And I think that that is to the advantage of Kamala Harris and her campaign, that there are folks who are thinking this is not just about the presidential election but it’s also about the Supreme Court. It’s about the federal judiciary. It’s about the implications that a president can have that is not just in four years, but it lasts for decades. And so, because folks are not just thinking about this moment, they’re thinking beyond this moment. She has the benefit of that.
Matt Grossmann: You’ve also researched the increasing racialization of elections and how racial resentment increasingly divides voters in the two parties. And it was interesting that, last time, even though we had some modest racial depolarization, at least at the group level in voting for the candidates, there was still a continuation of those trends that you found in terms of the divide by racial attitudes, even if not growing, by racial groups. So have we reached the limit of our division by racial attitudes or are you expecting even further moves in that direction?
Jamil Scott: To that question, I’ll say that I don’t think that we’ve necessarily reached the limit. And I say that because we have folks like Andrew Engelhardt, who’s also done similar work that has thought about how negative racial attitudes also fits with this conversation around polarization. And so I think that as the parties have become more polarized and negative racial attitudes fit into this conversation, I think that means that there are going to be people that are never going to be reached. And that changes the conversation about the median voter, this conversation that we tend to have every four years. How do we speak to the median? Well, I think the median is shifting because of polarization, because of negative racial attitudes. There are going to be people who aren’t going to be reached. And so, it becomes not just about how can you reach to the other side, it’s about how can you get people to show up on election day, folks who are more receptive to the message.
And there are a number of issues that I think from a polarization standpoint, from a single issue voter standpoint, that is changing the equation for folks. I think for many women, as an example, the idea of rights going away, like abortion rights going away, was a fundamental change for them. The idea that certain rights that we thought about as being paramount or certain could be up for conversation again after the election, given some of these goals in Project 2025 that I think is changing how folks’ relationship in some ways with the Republican Party and making them willing to think about maybe that come all the way under the tent, but be willing to think about at least voting for a Democratic candidate in this election cycle, and that’s meaningful.
Matt Grossmann: So we talked about a lot of research, but I wonder how much is actionable. That is, if you’re advising the Harris campaign, what do we really have to tell them about moving forward?
Jamil Scott: So moving forward, it’s going to be a tough race, and I’m sure that they recognize that. But I think that there is going to have to be intentional pushes to reach out to voters to make them, make it clear the importance of showing up on election day. And it’s not just about her campaign, it’s about mobilizing voters on the ground to show up. We know that it’s often the case that people aren’t reached by the party, and this is an election cycle that really has to be different, that there has to be connections to people on the ground and to know that the party is paying attention and wants to hear from them, particularly as we think not just about race and gender issues, but also the issue of Palestine, that there are folks who are still on the fence about showing up. Well, we can’t forget the uncommitted voters who showed up during the Democratic primary. So with that being said, there has to be a strong reach out by the Democratic Party more generally, but especially the Harris campaign to get people on board.
Matt Grossmann: And what do you think, not that the campaign is necessarily listening to political scientists in general, but what advice might they get from traditional political science that would be different than the advice that they would get from people who study racial and ethnic politics and gender and politics?
Jamil Scott: So I think that the advice more generally might be to pay attention to just the swing states. And that is not to say, I am saying they should not pay attention to the swing states, I think they should most certainly pay attention to the swing states. But I think that we can’t take for granted that people are necessarily completely on board that because of these different dynamics, this is not 2016, it’s not 2008, and som we can’t assume that people are going to show up for the Democratic Party, particularly minority voters, specifically Black voters. And so, there has to be an intentional reach out to these voters to say, “We care, we’re listening, and we need your vote this time around. Not just because you should be afraid about what could happen, but because the party is listening.” I think it is a both in conversation that should be happening now and attention to voters, but also an intention to reaching out to voters about what they want, but also this attention to swing states.
Matt Grossmann: So the real world also makes its way back into research. As you know, the Hillary Clinton campaign spurred a lot of research, as did the Obama campaign. So what kinds of research do you expect the Harris nomination to spur? Are there key questions that remain unanswered that this cycle might help us with?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so we often talk about the Wilder effect, but Doug Wilder was a man. So I think one of the key questions is about will this be the case that we see a Black woman candidate be able to win in a non-district level election campaign? So we’ll certainly see research about that, the appeals that will matter for voters. There are these questions around whether or not what types of messaging people want to see from a candidate and how that mattered for this election cycle and how she shows up. Do people want to see her talking about both of her identities? Do they want her to talk about one identity at a time? How many places does she have to show up for people to perceive her as being authentic and what that means for how people perceive her as a candidate?
So I think that because of her multiple identities, there are conversations to be had about and research to be done about what appeals matter to voters, how this time point and her opponent matter. Do people perceive this as being a Trump presidency 2.0 and will emotions factor more into this election as opposed to the identity considerations? So there are a number of things to be thinking about, and this the opportune moment to be asking questions and thinking how voters are not just thinking about their own choices, but also thinking about how their neighbors are thinking about the election cycle. But if we think about work from Regina Bateson as an example about people thinking about these strategic discrimination considerations.
Matt Grossmann: And what will you be working on this cycle? What’s next?
Jamil Scott: Yeah, so for me, what’s next is getting a pulse on what delegates are thinking about this election cycle. If we can actually get into the DNC, we’ll see how that works out. But also, keeping a pulse on how voters are perceiving this moment and how they think about their relationship to voting, particularly voters of color. I think that there’s a conversation to be had about how we perceive civic duty. I don’t think it’s necessarily civic duty in the way that we’ve traditionally conceived of it for Black voters in particular. And so, I think that we should be having these conversations around what civic duty means, “civic duty” for different groups in the United States, and how do we reconceive of some of the notions we take as fixed about how American politics works for communities of color.
Matt Grossmann: Just one more question.
Jamil Scott: Sure.
Matt Grossmann: So let’s say it turns out that the early polls are right and Black voters, there’s a phenomenal move toward the Republicans this election cycle that’s concentrated among Black voters. What will we look back on in terms of having missed, or how will we explain that?
Jamil Scott: Sure. So if it is the case that there’s this fundamental shift to the Republican Party amongst Black voters, then I think this is a real push to be conscious about these things that we assume is fixed, that Black voters will be Democrats and they will show up for the Democratic Party. I think that there’s a real push from voters, especially Black voters, to be conscious about what are the parties doing, what are their options, and how things might look different moving forward.
And so, I don’t think that that’s a bad thing, I don’t know but… The better way to say this is, I think this is why these conversations around third parties and different voting mechanisms and rules are coming up because people are thinking about whether either party serves their interest and what might a different party system look like. So I think I’m at a point in American politics where I don’t want to be like my professors in ’08 who said that they didn’t think that the Obama presidency was going to happen. But I’m also trying to hold on to some of the things we know as troops, “troops for American politics.” But I’m open to learning new things.
Matt Grossmann: There’s a lot more to learn. The Science of Politics is available biweekly from the Niskanen Center. I’m your host, Matt Grossmann. If you like this discussion, here are the episodes you should check out next, all linked on our website, Racial Minorities Can Win Elections, Here’s What’s Holding Them Back; Women In and Out of Politics; Why Republican Women Don’t Run for Office and Why It Matters for the Gender Gap in Voting; A Century of Votes for Women; and How Black Voters Choose Candidates. Thanks to Jamil Scott for joining me. Please check out her topical research and then listen in next time.