Why can’t Kamala Harris win over the female vote?

Whether you listen to Call Her Daddy or not, you cannot deny the podcasting clout Alex Cooper has achieved. The podcast boasts a listenership of 40 million, its past guests include Katy Perry and Rebel Wilson and, last year, the show had the second-largest audience on Spotify, second only to The Joe Rogan Experience. Why then, did one of her episodes earlier this month, uncharacteristically, start with an apology? Because she was interviewing vice president Kamala Harris, of course.

“I do not usually discuss politics, or have politicians on this show, because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place where everyone feels comfortable tuning in,” Cooper warned the “Daddy Gang”.

Call Her Daddy has been one of many nontraditional media choices Harris’s team has made on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, she also appeared on The View and The Howard Stern Show, baffling both Republicans and Democrats in the process. In April, she even appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show, where, leaning across the studio’s cream sofa, Barrymore pleaded with the vice president to be the “Momala” the nation needed. It’s meant to be endearing yet it reads as misjudged at best, skin-crawlingly embarrassing at worst.

The traditional methods of connecting with the electorate are no longer enough. As former Obama White House spokesperson Erik Schultz told the Mirror US: “We don’t live in an age when everyone gets their news from three white guys at 6:30 every night.”

(It reminded me of something a colleague said recently: an MP had told them that speeches are written with “what would do well on TikTok in mind”.)

According to Cooper, Call Her Daddy‘s audience is made up of “politically divided” voters, so it’s no surprise as to why Harris wants to reach them. Data obtained by NPR suggests that the show’s audience is 24% Republican and 20% Independent. More importantly, Cooper’s audience is predominantly female: 70% of listeners are women and of those, 76% are under 35 years old while 93% are under 45. Cooper could offer the vice president the key to unlocking the female vote – but why does she need the podcaster’s help?

During his presidency, Donald Trump picked Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, making good on his 2016 promise to appoint pro-life judges. Then, as predicted, in 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. On social media, Trump proudly claimed ownership of this and now 20 states have their own Trumpian abortion bans, some including in the case of rape or incest. The controversial Project 2025 wants to go even further, proposing a ban on the abortion pill, mifepristone, further limiting reproductive healthcare. Meanwhile, JD Vance has his eyes on no-fault divorces. When these are her opponents, why does Harris need help in courting the female vote?

In the interview itself, Harris responded to Trump’s promise to be the protector of women during a rally in September and shared personal anecdotes of her fight to be California’s first female attorney general. She hit back at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s remarks that, without children of her own, the vice president has nothing to keep her humble. As for JD Vance’s comments that the Democrats had been infiltrated by “childless cat ladies”, that was “just mean”.

Then the pair came to Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother whose death was preventable but Georgia’s abortion ban stopped doctors from doing a simple procedure to save her life. On the podcast, Harris describes the conversations she had with Thurman’s family, how she’d just gotten accepted into nursing school and her plans for the future. Thurman died in September. In November, the country goes to the polls.

Last month, polling from 19th News/SurveyMonkey found that white women narrowly prefer Harris to Trump by 42% to 40% with the same data finding that a majority of Black women support Harris as do most Hispanic and Asian American women.

Harris is going after that remaining 18% which could make or break the election. It’s a clever strategy that hopefully pays off, but the fact that it’s a hand she’s forced to play is dangerous. That’s how high the stakes are.