Melissa Murray: I agree with everything Symone said. One thing that stuck out to me is something that some of the women in our Washington, D.C. nail salon segment said about this being an historic election. They understood that, but they also recognize that if Vice President Harris wins, and even if she shatters the glass ceiling, she’ll actually be on a glass cliff. Expectations for her will be so heightened.
So they recognize that for Black women, supporting her isn’t a one and done kind of deal. They’re going to come out and support her and vote for her in this election, and they also have to be ready to support her in the presidency, because she’s going to have a lot of eyes on her. Her successes will be recognized, but if she fails to succeed on certain fronts, that will also be magnified.
Townsend: Going back to that part that Melissa just highlighted, the women in the nail shop brought this up on their own. And then they likened it to President Biden when it comes to student loans. Even though he did put the policy in place, the Supreme Court blocked it. And young people across America are still saying that we don’t have the student loan reform.
The women specifically said that she’s going to have to be able to make good on the promises that she’s made. To me, that just reinforces that voters are paying attention. We have to give the voters in America more credit. They’re paying attention and are very nuanced in how they think about this election.
We’ve seen a gender gap emerge in the polls with more women planning to vote for Harris than men. Did you hear of that divide existing between Black men and women?
Murray: We did hear a bit about that. There’s been a lot of discussion about Black men—particularly young Black men without college degrees—being very Trump-curious, and we wondered if the same sort of curiosity might be reflected among younger Black women in that demographic. We were a little surprised to find that while many of the younger women were definitely disaffected, they were not Trump-curious. It was really just, “Do I sit this one out?” As opposed to, “Do I pull the lever for Donald Trump?” They were very clear that, in their view, he was an existential threat.
Townsend: I think that the gender gap that is showing up in some of the polling is indicative that there is still work to be done. This is going to be a close election, and the polls are a snapshot in time, but there is still work to do when it comes to some subset of male voters for the Harris campaign. Concurrently, there is real work to do for Donald Trump when it comes to women voters in America. I feel like the work that the Vice President has to do is different, and I would argue, more attainable than the work that Trump has to do, just because of the nature of the things that Trump himself has said and the policies that people connect him to.
