Race, gender, and the 2024 electorate

Andra Gillespie is an associate professor of political science and the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Her research focuses on the political leadership of African American politicians who attempt to transcend race and how Black voters respond to them. She is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America (2012) and Race and the Obama Administration: Symbols, Substance and Hope (2019). She is also the editor of Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership (2010). Gillespie holds a PhD in political science from Yale University.

Bertrall Ross is a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, faculty lead in the Karsh Institute Digital Technology and Democracy Lab, and founder of the Designing Democracy Project. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, constitutional theory, and election law. Ross is currently serving on the Administrative Conference of the United States and previously served on President Biden’s Supreme Court Commission. He earned his undergraduate degree in international affairs and history from the University of Colorado, Boulder; his graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs; and his law degree from Yale Law School.

Kevin K. Gaines is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and the Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia. He received his BA from Harvard University and his PhD from Brown University in the Department of American Civilization. He is author of Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), which was awarded the John Hope Franklin book prize of the American Studies Association.