American electorate balks twice in eight years to elect first woman president

By Mayank Chhaya-

In the last eight years the American electorate has twice had the opportunity to elect the country’s first woman president. Both times it balked.

First it was in the case of the accomplished but largely establishmentarian Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. And now, it is with the accomplished but largely outsider Kamala Harris.

While Clinton won the popular vote over her then Republican rival Donald Trump by over a million votes, she lost the electoral college to him 304 to 227. For Harris, although the final results are not in as of writing this, as things stand she has been projected to lose both the popular vote as well as the electoral college. According to The New York Times, Trump had received over 70 million votes or a little above 51% and was estimated to win 312 electoral college votes. Harris in contrast had won over 65 million votes or 47.5% and was estimated to win 226 electoral college votes by the Times. These numbers could change once all the results are tallied.

Going by the electoral map, Harris’s rejection is along partisan as well as geographical lines in the sense that the so-called red states in the middle of the country have chosen Trump over him.

If the 2016 and 2024 results prove anything, it is that the people of America are still not fully onboard having a woman president 248 years after it became the kind of democracy it broadly is today. Considering that Clinton is white and Harris of mixed Indian and Jamaican African parentage, the hesitation to elect a woman president among large sections of America does not seem to be prompted by the color of the skin but the gender of the candidate. At least in the case of Clinton, it was more nuanced because she did win the popular vote handily but was undermined by the electoral college system.

There has been consistent and even growing criticism of the electoral college system. Over the last two centuries or so some 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress “to reform or eliminate the Electoral College,” according to the National Archives. “There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject,” it says.

The National Archives explains the system thus: “The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. However, the term “electoral college” does not appear in the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to “electors,” but not to the “electoral college.”

In order to reform or eliminate the electoral college, a Constitutional amendment is necessary since it is part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution.
The Archives says, “The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your State has the same number of electors as it does Members in its Congressional delegation: one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators.”

Harris’s comprehensive defeat is a significant setback to achieving a semblance of gender equity in electing U.S. presidents because it is also a manifestation of sociocultural predilections. Of course, without the electoral college Clinton would have become president had the presidential election was determined by who wins more popular votes.

With barely two months left before the inauguration of a second Trump presidency, Harris will have to think in terms of life beyond the White House for the next four years at least. It is not a given that she will try again in 2028. However, considering she managed to build up a credible electoral machine in about three months after her dramatic rise to the top of the Democratic ticket it is not altogether inconceivable that she may not shut the door on her presidential ambitions.

For now, it is a sobering reminder for her and Democrats that high-powered and spectacular celebrity endorsements that she received are no guarantee at all to winning. Even running a disciplined campaign the way she did in contrast to Trump’s rambling and disjointed one does not necessarily ensure victory.