What's in a name? Is Kamala or Harris taking on Trump?

Democrats are gleefully sweeping aside a decade of research. Maybe that’s a good thing?

Edited and with additional reporting by my friend and former colleague Ryan Grim, who just launched Drop Site News and also published this piece over on his Substack.

Just hours after Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, his rapid response page on Twitter had transitioned from @BidenHQ to @KamalaHQ and fully rebranded as a “brat summer”-themed page for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. “Welcome to Kamala HQ,” tweeted the account, which displays just her first name in the banner and thumbnail photos. Her first ad, released today, features crowds chanting, “Kamala,” waving one-word campaign signs with her name. 

In Washington, operatives who’ve spent years in the gender trenches have done a double take this week, fully aware that over the past decade, private research done by the feminist group EMILY’s List has shown a distinct pattern when it came to female candidates: Voters react much more favorably to women running for office when their last name is used rather than their first name. EMILY’s List has arguably invested more heavily in Harris than any candidate since Hillary Clinton, yet even they leaned into using her first name only out of the gate. What gives?

We do tend to call male presidential candidates—Obama, Bush, Trump, Biden—by their last names, and women—Hillary, Kamala, Tulsi—by their first. It could be just a matter of practicality: Hillary needed to be distinguished from the other President Clinton, and Kamala is a more distinctive name than Harris, whereas Trump and Biden are more unique names than Donald and Joe. But according to research EMILY’s List has been conducting internally for the past decade or so, the habit has negative political consequences for the women. (Meanwhile, #NotAllMen have eschewed the first-name familiarity with voters. And while it’s gone well for some—Mayor Pete has become Secretary Pete and, he no doubt hopes, one day will answer to President Pete—there are also some cautionary tales: Jeb!)

A veteran staffer at the feminist PAC, which was founded in 1985 to elect pro-choice Democratic women to state and national offices, told me they’ve been doing A/B testing on the use of a candidate’s first name vs. her last or full name, and the findings consistently show that voters are more likely to view women candidates favorably in the latter case. This, of course, points to some internalized sexism, as a woman’s first name is the only one that can be easily identified as feminine. A separate source who has been briefed on the research said that a more in-depth look is underway to test the strength of what they’ve found. 

And the research tracks with earlier studies showing that men across professional domains, including science and literature, are twice more likely than the women in their fields to be called by their surnames. Those professionals described only by their surname, in turn, are considered to be “more eminent and 14% more deserving of a career award,” according to a 2018 Cornell study.

EMILY’s List has never made this research public, as it only consists of split-testing on various polls, as opposed to a comprehensive report—and even they don’t always abide by their own findings. Shortly after Biden stepped aside, the group’s digital team tweeted a graphic of Harris’ first name only with the text, “We’re #allinforKamala, are you?” Asked about the use of the first name only in the graphic, running contrary to the research, a spokesperson thanked me for flagging it and sent an amended graphic including her last name that the group plans to use going forward.

Yet the momentum of “Kamala” seems unstoppable—a stack of internal research is clearly no match for it. “Harris” just can’t keep up. Liberal Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, citing similar research research on first names, chided her followers about using Harris’s first name on Twitter, only to get Community Noted: “Jennifer Rubin referred to Kamala Harris as ‘Kamala’ multiple times two days ago,” observed the community.

Now that Harris is poised to replace Biden, Trump and the GOP are struggling to attack her in any substantive way and are already resorting to every sexist trope in the book. Conservative darlings Matt Walsh and Laura Loomer essentially called Harris a whore who slept her way into politics, and even Megyn Kelly doubled down on the accusation. Trump, who has bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade and been found civilly liable for sexual assault, walked into the Republican National Convention to a rendition of “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” He chose J.D. Vance as his running mate, who’s called women without children—including Harris—“miserable cat ladies” and opposes universal childcare and no-fault divorce, even for domestic abuse victims. Christian Nationalist Lance Wallnau said Harris has the “spirit of a jezebel,” a Biblical term for a wicked, untrustworthy, manipulative woman. Perhaps the use of the first name suggests Democrats intuitively believe they may finally be in a gendered fight, post-Roe, they can actually win.