When then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton conceded defeat to the president-elect Donald Trump in November 2016, she told her audience to keep one thing in mind.

“I know we haven’t broken that highest and toughest glass ceiling yet, but one day, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now,” Clinton said. said at the time.

Eight years later, vice president Kamala Harris assumed the Democratic nomination after the president Joe Bidenhis decision to drop out of the race, meaning another woman was within striking distance of finally winning the White House.

However, this did not materialize. trump card he won the race after securing 312 electoral votes while managing a clean sweep of the seven battleground states. Also, Trump is still on track to win the popular vote.

That Democrats continues to assess the reasons for the bitter loss, many are wondering about the effect the result will have on future female presidential candidates.

Unlike Clinton in 2016, Harris did not emphasize the historic nature of her candidacy, choosing not to bring up her gender in this campaign.

“I’m clearly a woman,” Harris said NBC News in October. “I don’t have to point that out to anyone.”

Despite their different strategies, both lost to Trump, indicating a unique challenge for female candidates.

“It’s clear how much work we have to do, because you can’t win either way,” said Erin Loos Cutraro, founder and CEO of She Should Run, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on increasing the number of women who are considering running for office. for the office. “There’s no roadmap for it.”

Despite the challenge of crafting an effective message as a female candidate, Cutraro said it’s undeniable that the U.S. would benefit from more female representation.

“We can’t have the smartest policies if we don’t tap into the full slate of what this country has to offer,” Cutraro told HuffPost. “And whether or not the country is ready to talk about that as an advantage seems to be determined. But the reality that women’s voices and perspectives matter is not up for debate.”

The Democratic primary that followed Clinton’s defeat saw a record six female presidential candidates, including Harris, compete for the party’s endorsement.

At the time, electabilitythat is, a candidate’s perceived ability to beat Trump, emerged in the minds of Democratic primary voters to the benefit of incumbent Joe Biden, who ultimately won the race to become the party’s 2020 nominee.

While it’s still too early to determine how the 2024 outcome will factor into the minds of potential presidential candidates and voters going forward, some Democrats already appear to be lining up to lead the party into the next general election.

It remains unclear what role Harris intends to play in 2028 given the disappointing result on November 5.

Harris’ defeat was likely a combination of multiple factors at play that her 107-day campaign failed to withstand.

Christine Matthews, a center-right pollster and president of Bellwether Research & Consulting, said the “fundamentals,” namely inflation, Biden’s unpopularity and the rise of populism around the world, played a big role in Harris’ defeat.

Matthews argued that even if the Democrats had chosen a male candidate, that candidate would likely have lost for the same reasons.

Matthews added that while she doesn’t expect Harris’ defeat to make voters less inclined to support female candidates in the future, she says the outcome of the race could be “demoralizing” for female politicians who want to run for the White House. especially given Trump’s campaign, often resorting to sexist attacks against his opponent.

“It could dampen interest among women candidates who are looking at such a high bar, apparently, and what voters are willing to accept from men, especially Donald Trump, right, and how none of this would be acceptable if a woman were to do so.” Matthews said.

But Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List, told HuffPost that we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of candidates who have lost past presidential races are men.

“Whenever a man loses one of these elections, we don’t go back and say, ’98 percent of the people who lost presidential races are white men,'” Mackler said.

Cynthia Richie Terrell, founder and executive director of RepresentWomen, an organization focused on promoting gender-balanced representation at every level of government, said Mackler, suggesting it would be a mistake to “jump to the conclusion that women won’t be supported. of voters” after the defeats of only two female presidential candidates.

Richie Terrell cited the success women have seen at the local level, including in state legislatures, where women are poised to become the majority of legislators in Democratic caucuses.

“There is a hunger for female leadership. And I think there’s a hunger for the kinds of policy decisions that are associated with women running and women being elected,” added Richie Terrell.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center last year finder that while 31 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning adults said it was very or extremely important to see a woman elected president in their lifetime, only 5 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters shared the same opinion.

Matthews anticipates that Republican women will not be as “demoralized” when assessing the election outcome, suggesting that they are more averse to “identity politics” compared to Democrats.

Ali Vitali, Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News and author of “Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House… Yet,” suggested that the fact that republicans My dislike of “identity politics” might explain why Harris chose not to emphasize the historic nature of his candidacy as he tried to court GOP voters who may never have voted for a Democrat before.

Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who was the last candidate against Trump in the Republican primary, also largely avoided leaning towards her gender, perhaps in recognition of this.

However, the desire to see a woman lead the White House should not be viewed as a partisan issue.

“The reason we should want to see this glass ceiling broken has nothing to do with parties. It has everything to do with reflective governance,” Vitali said. “When you have a greater diversity of opinion and lived experience, you get better policy.”

A’shanti F. Gholar, president of Emerge, an organization dedicated to recruiting and training Democratic women to successfully run for office, said that since Clinton’s defeat in 2016, there has been a large increase in women interested in entering politics.

“People have called it the Trump effect. And I said, “That’s incorrect. This is the Hillary effect,’” Gholar told HuffPost.

Gholar says Harris’ candidacy will similarly inspire more female candidates to enter politics, noting that Emerge already sees many women attending community meetings and joining their training sessions.

“We will absolutely have the Kamala effect,” Gholar said.

“We’re definitely going to see more women running, but that’s because they want to continue the legacy of Secretary Clinton and Vice President Harris,” she continued.

Prior to her presidential bid, Harris made history on several fronts in 2020 when she became vice president as the first woman, the first person of color, and the first Asian American elected to the role.

And before Harris, the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, made history in 1972, becoming the first female candidate to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, as well as the first black candidate to seek the endorsement of both major parties.

Glynda C. Carr, president and co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization working to elect women of color, said The Guardian that Chisholm set an example by having “the audacity to run for president all the way to the convention” as a black woman.

“The direct product of this Chisholm effect was Barbara Lee — Congresswoman Barbara Lee,” Carr said. “There is one, two or many that will be inspired by a Kamala Harris and cannot be lost.”

It’s true that, presidential race aside, women made history this election day. For example, Democratic senators Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware will to be the first two black women to serve concurrently in the upper house of Congress.

Vitali told HuffPost that presidential races are an imperfect measure of the strides women have made in American politics, in part, because of the many external factors that affect the primary process that propels candidates to the nomination.

Still, Vitali argued that as more women run for president, “it becomes less fatal when someone loses and still jubilant when someone wins.”

“That kind of repetition, that kind of habit building, is exactly the kind of thing it’s going to take to eventually break the glass ceiling,” Vitali added.