(OP-ED) The Intersectionality Penalty: How N.C. Democrats Failed Kamala Harris in 2024

Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by 183,048 votes in North Carolina, according to NCSBE data. Trump captured 50.9% while Harris garnered 47.6% of the ballots cast. 

For Harris, the outcome of the election was intricately tied to her track record as an elected official in California, her voting record in the U.S. Senate, and her involvement in and support for Biden-era policymaking as Vice President of the U.S. Harris’s stance on a range of hot button campaign issues, including immigration, the war in Gaza, reproductive and transgender rights, her early unwillingness to distance herself from Biden, and the Opportunity Agenda that served as her political platform, also strongly influenced the election outcome.  

But, as a Black and South Asian American woman aspiring to lead the most powerful nation in the world, the intersectional impacts of Harris’s race and gender cannot be minimized. Trump viciously attacked Harris on her mixed-race background and upbringing, prior relationships and marriage, intellect, personal demeanor (i.e., her laugh), and core values as an advocate for those left behind in U.S. society. The election outcome suggests Trump’s strategy worked—at least for some voters. 

More importantly, we believe Democratic-leaning voters failed Harris in the 2024 election. Consistent with the intersectionality postulate, defined initially by Crenshaw, more ballots were cast for Josh Stein, North Carolina’s White male gubernatorial candidate, than were cast for Rachel Hunt, the White female candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and Harris, the biracial female presidential candidate, received fewer votes than both of her colleagues who were running on the Democratic ticket for statewide office. Stein and Hunt won their respective races while Harris lost her election bid– an outcome we characterize as the intersectional impact of Harris’s candidacy.

Statewide, there was a seven-point gap between Stein’s share (54.9%) and Harris’s share (47.6%) of the ballots cast in the 2024 November elections. In absolute numbers, 354,121 fewer ballots were cast for Harris (2,715,375) than were cast for Stein (3,069,496). If Democratic-leaning North Carolinians had voted for Harris and Stein proportionately, Harris would have easily carried the state of North Carolina.   

The gap between the Hunt share (49.5%) and the Harris share (47.6%) of ballots cast was much narrower (2 points) than the Stein-Harris vote gap (7 points). Hunt (2,768,539) garnered 53,164 more votes than Harris (2,715,375), a significant but insufficient absolute number of votes to catapult Harris to victory, assuming gender parity in ballots cast. However, if Hunt voters had cast ballots for Harris proportionately, in combination with roughly two-thirds of the Stein supporters who did not vote for Harris, this too would have catapulted Harris to victory over Trump in North Carolina. 

Statewide, only 88 votes were cast for Harris for every 100 votes cast for Stein. For every 100 ballots cast for Hunt statewide, 98 were cast for Harris. 

In relative terms, the vote gaps were widest between Harris and the two democratic candidates for statewide office in the state’s predominantly white, micropolitan, suburban, rural, and mountain counties, as well as in counties with a significant Hispanic population concentration and counties where growth was fueled by an influx of migrants from other states during the COVID-19 crisis between 2020 and 2022. For Harris, the vote gap—the intersectional impact—was much narrower in North Carolina counties where the population is majority Black and in counties with a diverse mix of races.   

Notably, in Piedmont, metropolitan, urban core, and growth magnet counties during the 2010s, where vote gaps hovered around the statewide average, Harris suffered major absolute vote losses compared to Stein and Hunt because these are areas where most of the state’s population is concentrated. Had Harris achieved vote parity with her two democratic counterparts for statewide office in any of these highly populated communities, she again would have easily won the North Carolina election.

Source: https://er.ncsbe.gov/?election_dt=11/05/2024&county_id=0&office=FED&contest=0

Two final data points on the intersectional impact of Harris’s race and gender: North Carolinians cast more ballots for Stein (3,069,496) than they did for Trump (2,898,423), and the vote count differential between Hunt and Trump (129,884) was much narrower than vote count differential between Harris and Trump (183,048). 

Consciously or unconsciously, democratic-leaning voters in North Carolina imposed an intersectionality penalty on Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Submitted by:

 

James H. Johnson, Jr. is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Jeanne Milliken Bonds is a Professor of the Practice, Impact Investment, and Sustainable Finance in the Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Wendell M. Davis is a retired local government and higher education executive. He is the founder and managing principal of Sixty-Revolutions, LLC, a best-practices, business development, and technology consulting firm based in Burlington, NC.