The number of Americans who say they’re ready for a woman president has fallen by nine points since 2015, according to a YouGov poll conducted by The Times in partnership with SAY24.
The survey was conducted after President Biden dropped out of the race and was designed to gauge voters’ attitudes around “gender bias” and Vice President Harris’ chances of victory in November.
Respondents said both Trump and Harris were equally qualified for the presidency, with 49% saying so, but voters balked at the idea of a female president, with 54% of the public saying they would be open to a female president and 30% saying they were not.
That’s down from 2015, when an Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of voters were open to a woman president. The survey was conducted in May of that year, just one month after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy and one month before she became the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
Harris is the second candidate to claim the nomination, but her gender could be a major obstacle: 41% of Americans assume that if the two candidates were equally qualified, more than half of their fellow citizens would not be willing to vote for a woman over a man.
This assessment also applies to Democrats: 77% say the US is ready for a woman president, while 37% think Americans wouldn’t vote for an equally qualified woman. These fears may explain why 35% of Democrats say Harris should choose a man as her running mate, while only 6% say she should choose a woman.
Among Democrats likely to be selected as vice presidential candidates, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer had the highest support at 27 percent, but she chose not to pursue the vice presidential race, instead joining Harris’ campaign as co-chair.
The top two candidates for vice presidential nomination, former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D-Pennsylvania), are also doing well, with approval ratings both at 22 percent.
The YouGov poll was conducted among 1,170 US voters on Tuesday and Wednesday and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
