This year will be 20-year-old Georgia Tech student Ansley Bailey’s first presidential election, but not her first political act.
She has registered to vote and volunteered on Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s campaign. Now, she is eager to cast a ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris, which she hopes will result in progress on the issues that affect her — the right to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental protection and student loan relief.
“I like that this is a candidate that I’m actually excited about,” she said. “This is somebody that I want to elect and put into office.”
Bailey is among a growing number of white women in Georgia and across the nation spurred to action to support the vice president. Inspired by the organizing calls of Black women and men to back Harris’ rocket-fast ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, thousands of these women joined a national conference call last week dubbed “White Women: Answer the Call! Show up for Kamala Harris.”
On the call, some of those women joked that they were “Karens for Kamala,” turning the internet pejorative for entitled white women on its head. In the process, organizers said they set a record for the most simultaneous Zoom participants at more than 160,000 and raised roughly $1 million within the first 30 minutes for the campaign. That tally surpassed $11 million in the days since.
These white women said they were not only planning to vote for Harris but would be spreading the word to other white women. In a close election where the campaigns are battling for every slice of the voter pie, their efforts — if successful — could make the path to victory harder for the Republican ticket led by former President Donald Trump.
Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action and organizer of the call, noted as much.
“We are the nation’s largest voting bloc, but since the 1950s most of us have voted for Republican presidential candidates in all but just two presidential elections,” she said.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
In Georgia, white women compose over 25% of the electorate, making them the largest race and gender demographic in the state.
Watts said white women cannot be treated as a monolith, adding that voting patterns vary by religion, marital status and education.
“That division makes us not only a crucial voting bloc, but an unpredictable one,” she said. “So even the smallest shifts in our voting behavior can have significant impact on election outcomes. In other words, if we do the work, white women can flip the script this time.”
Harris’ campaign and the Democratic Party at large have embraced these overtures to white female voters. The campaign is framing the election as a chance to pass federal protections for abortion and contraception. But they also frame the conversation more generally as a rebuke of far-right conservatism that envisions a return to traditional gender roles where women had less autonomy over their bodies and fewer opportunities in the workforce.
“Georgia women know that our fundamental freedoms are on the line this election, as Trump, JD Vance and their extreme Project 2025 agenda is promising to ban abortion nationwide and restrict reproductive health care like (in vitro fertilization) and contraception,” Lacey Morrison, Georgia campaign manager for Harris for President, said in a statement. “Women across Georgia are fired up and ready to elect Kamala Harris so we can deliver the White House just like we did in 2020.”
During a campaign rally Tuesday at the Georgia State University Convocation Center, Harris highlighted issues that affect women such as affordable child care and reproductive rights.
“We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans,” she said during a speech. “And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.”
While the Harris campaign coordinates outreach to female voters, Georgia State University political science professor Amy Steigerwalt said Republicans have some hurdles to overcome. Some of the messaging from Republicans, such as calling Harris a “DEI hire” — referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs — and criticizing the fact she does not have biological children, could hurt their standing with women, some of whom already have misgivings about Trump’s legal issues, as well as their wider concerns about threats to reproductive rights, Steigerwalt said.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s pitch to white women is baked into the campaign’s overall message and tone. Themes such as stopping illegal immigration, boosting the economy and lowering crime resonate with all voters and will help keep key demographics in Trump’s corner, a GOP spokeswoman said.
“I think the campaign has built a very specific operation around President Trump and American voters which is highlighting and emphasizing President Trump’s vision for America, which is a vision that resonates with everybody,” said Rachel Reisner, the Republican Party’s director of communications in battleground states such as Georgia. “It’s about all Americans, not necessarily one specific type.”
Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler went even further, criticizing the Democrats’ organization calls for white women as a play at identity politics that is destined to fail.
“While the Harris campaign plays identity politics, women face the same challenges under the Biden-Harris administration that 70% of Americans say has put us on the wrong track,” Loeffler said in a statement. “Whether buying groceries, gas, a home or school supplies, women are confronted with the very real cost of failed leadership every day.”
A June poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 68% of Georgians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, but that does not mean that all the respondents blame President Joe Biden and Harris. A similar majority of Americans reported dissatisfaction with the direction of the country in polling during Trump’s administration, as well, according to Gallup.
Leanne Shaddix, a 49-year-old voter from Cherokee County, is one of former President Donald Trump’s supporters who hopes electing him will help tamp down inflation. She voted for him in 2016 and 2020.
“We are a DINK house — so double income, no kids — and our grocery bill is $200 or $300 a week. It’s outlandish,” she said.
In the past two presidential elections, CNN exit polling reported that more than 67% of white women in Georgia voted for Trump while fewer than 7% of Black women did. In Atlanta’s suburbs, these polls show that slightly more people are voting for Democrats, with 50% of respondents voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 53% voting for Biden in 2020. Among suburban women, 58% reported voting for Biden in 2020.
White women also consistently demonstrate the highest participation in elections, making up more than 30% of voters in each of the past four presidential elections and midterms. In the 2020 election, white men fell a few percentage points behind them, and Black women were the third-largest group with 16% of the vote.
One organization hoping to increase female support for Harris is the Seneca Project, founded by two women who during the past presidential cycle were involved with the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political action committee. Launched earlier this year, the Seneca Project has a similar mission but is focused specifically on messaging to moderate women in swing states to elect Harris.
Tara Setmayer, Seneca’s CEO and co-founder, said these voters are more persuadable after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortion under Roe v. Wade.
“The message we felt that women need to fully understand is what is at stake going into this election cycle if Republicans have their way or if Donald Trump were to win the election,” she said during a recent interview.
Much of that messaging is aimed at women who usually support Republicans in presidential years but who are uncomfortable enough with Trump to consider the Democratic ticket.
One such voter is 65-year-old Amy Hayes, a private nurse from DeKalb County, a lifelong Republican who refuses to vote for Trump.
“There is no circumstance on the face of the Earth that I would vote for that lunatic Donald Trump. Zero. He is a misogynist. He is anti-woman,” she said. “I couldn’t stand Hillary Clinton with the hate of 10,000 suns, but I voted for her because she was a better choice for America.”
Hayes plans to vote for Harris, although she worries about her electability as a biracial woman. She said she is motivated by a desire to protect a woman’s right to abortion and to create a future that her friends’ grandchildren can enjoy.
The Seneca Project recently began running an ad in Georgia and other swing states paying tribute to female athletes and Olympians while encouraging mothers to think about their children when deciding who to cast ballots for in November.
“We must win for them,” Setmayer said. “That’s an actual line for our ad. That’s how it ends.”
