Record Zoom vote for Kamala Harris mobilizes white women voters

Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize black women voters in support of Kamala Harris, a similar event on Thursday brought together more than 160,000 participants aimed at white women and appears to have broken records.

White women will be a key demographic for Democrats to win this election.

The presidential campaign for Harris, who would become the first female president of the United States if she wins for the Democrats in November and would become the first Black and South Asian woman to be a major party presidential nominee if confirmed at the Democratic National Convention next month, has taken off rapidly since Joe Biden announced last Sunday that he would withdraw from his re-election campaign.

It’s time to hold a conference call between white women, like black women and men are doing, to support Vice President Kamala Harris.

Who’s in?

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 23, 2024

“It’s our turn to show up. So this is what we’re doing. Hold this date and time,” read a virtual flyer for an event calling on white women — the majority of whom tend to vote Republican — to rally for Harris, which was widely shared on social media.

“White Women: Answer the Call,” a Zoom call inspired by the call for Black women held earlier this week, brought together 164,000 white women, setting a world record for the largest Zoom meeting in history. Nearly $2 million was raised for Harris in less than two hours Thursday night.

The Zoom call that started it all was hosted Sunday by Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders and organizers, hours after Biden’s decision, and saw an astonishing 44,000 participants, raising more than $1.5 million for Harris’ fledgling campaign.

The tens of thousands of people who were unable to access the call because it was sold out streamed it through other platforms such as Twitch, Clubhouse and YouTube.

It was just one of several calls the group has held since 2020, when it was founded by strategist Jotaka Eaddy.

A “Win With Black Men” appeal, also inspired by the appeal with black women, raised more than $1.3 million in support of Harris from more than 17,000 donors as of Monday.

Shannon Watts, a prominent gun control activist, organized Thursday’s event, which included actress Connie Britton, former football star Megan Rapinoe, U.S. House Representative Lizzie Fletcher and musician Pink. The group had raised more than $8.5 million as of Friday afternoon, Watts tweeted.

NEW: We’ve raised over $8.5 million so far!

All this since last night’s Zoom, where nearly 200,000 women answered the call for Kamala Harris.

THANKS @WinWithBLKWomen to show us how it’s done.

Help us reach $10 million: https://t.co/ruTF35YYDC

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 26, 2024

Exit polls found that 52% of white women of voting age in 2016 voted for Donald Trump, a figure that likely helped tip the scales in his favor. At the time, he was running against Hillary Clinton, who was hoping to become the first female president. In 2020, the majority of white women voted for Trump again.

“A majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate since the 2000 presidential election, when white women were almost evenly split between Democrat Al Gore and the Republican winner, George W. Bush,” according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

“In contrast, large majorities of black, Latina and Asian women supported the Democratic candidate throughout the period for which gender- and race-disaggregated data were available.”

Watts said she hopes history does not repeat itself.

“Fellow white women: We can and must fix this, and it starts with mobilizing as Black women,” Watts wrote on Instagram ahead of the call. She linked to a Substack post she wrote, which read in part: “White women voting Republican, even when it seems against their best interests, is a complex phenomenon informed by privilege, systemic racism and sexism, religious affiliations, and, of course, patriarchy.”

“But we are not a monolithic group; our voting habits are typically divided along lines of religion, education and marital status, and this division makes us not only a crucial voting bloc, but also an unpredictable one – even small changes in our voting behaviour can have significant implications for election outcomes.”

Watts added: “In other words, if we start working now, we can create a shift in voting dynamics that will help Black women elect Vice President Harris as president in just 100 days.”