Record-breaking Zoom supporting Harris mobilizes white female voters [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Fri 26 Jul 2024 13.45 EDT
Last modified on Fri 26 Jul 2024 14.05 EDT


Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records. White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.

The presidential campaign of Harris, who would become America’s first female president if she wins for the Democrats in November, and will become the first Black woman and south Asian woman to be a major party’s presidential candidate if she is confirmed at the Democratic national convention next month, has taken off quickly since Joe Biden announced last Sunday he would step aside from his re-election campaign.

“It’s our turn to show up. So that’s what we’re doing. Hold this date and time,” read the virtual flyer for an event calling for white women – the majority of whom tend to vote Republican – to mobilize for Harris shared widely on social media. “White Women: Answer the Call,” a Zoom call inspired by the one for Black women held earlier this week, saw 164,000 white women joining the call, reportedly setting a world record as the largest Zoom meeting in history. Nearly $2m was raised for Harris in less than two hours on Thursday night.

The Zoom call that started it all was hosted on Sunday by Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders and organizers, within hours of Biden’s decision, and saw an astonishing 44,000 participants, raising more than $1.5m for Harris’s budding campaign. The tens of thousands of those who couldn’t access that call because it was at capacity streamed it through other platforms such as Twitch, Clubhouse and YouTube.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kamala-harris-zoom-answer-the-call