Gender and Elections

For many, the 2020 presidential election is most linked to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and indeed, this shaped every aspect of the election year, including the emphasis on health and health care policy issues, how campaigning occurred, and where, when and how voters cast their ballots. In reality, we navigated the 2020 election year amid twin pandemics in that the COVID-19 pandemic collided with the nation’s racial reckoning in response to the police killings of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the police killing of Breonna Taylor during a raid of her Louisville, Kentucky home as she was in bed sleeping. Both the public health crisis and the protests that ensued from more police killings of unarmed African Americans created the unprecedented conditions of “pandemic politics” that centered race from multiple vantage points. Navigating pandemic politics prompted obvious changes to the methods many Americans used to cast their ballots, and unexpectedly created political opportunities that elevated African American women’s political leadership on the national stage as elected leaders and political activists.