List of female United States presidential and vice-presidential candidates

While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for president, some have questioned the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35, but election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873, and Woodhull's 35th birthday was six months later in September. In 1884, Belva Lockwood followed with a run for president. Her running mate was Marietta Stow, who became the first woman to run for vice president.[1]

The first woman to receive votes at a national political convention for president or vice president was Quaker activist and orator Lucretia Coffin Mott who received 6% of the votes in the first ballot for the vice president nomination at the 1848 convention of the Liberty Party.

Margaret Chase Smith announced her candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in 1964, becoming the first female candidate for a major party's nomination. She qualified for the ballot in six state primaries, and came in second in the Illinois primary, receiving 25% of the vote. She became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency at a major political party's convention.[2]

Charlene Mitchell was the first African American woman to run for president, and the first to receive valid votes in a general election, in 1968. She qualified for the ballot in two states as the nominee of the Communist Party USA, winning 1,075 votes.[3]

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first black candidate for a major party's presidential nomination, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's nomination.[4] During this primary, Chisholm won the New Jersey primary, becoming the first woman or African American to do so. This would not be repeated by another woman for 36 years, in 2008.

Also in 1972, Tonie Nathan, the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate, became the first woman to receive an electoral vote, via faithless elector Roger MacBride.[5] In the 1988 presidential election, Lenora Fulani became the first woman to achieve ballot access in all fifty states.[6] Fulani was also the first African American to do so. Three of her running mates, Joyce Dattner, Mamie Moore (also African American), and Wynonia Burke, also achieved ballot access separately in varying numbers out of the 50 states.

In the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York became the first woman to win a presidential primary, and the first to be listed as a presidential candidate in every primary and caucus nationwide.[7] Despite losing the nomination in a close race against Barack Obama, Clinton won more votes in 2008 than any primary candidate in American history.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominated for president by a major party after winning a majority of pledged delegates in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, and was formally nominated at the Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2016.[8][9] As a major party nominee, Clinton became the first woman to participate in a presidential debate, and later the first to carry a state in a general election. Despite losing the election, Clinton became the first woman to win the popular vote, receiving nearly 66 million votes to Donald Trump's 63 million.[10]

Prior to the 2020 United States presidential election cycle, only five women throughout history had made it to a major party's primary debate stage: Democrats Shirley Chisholm (in 1972), Carol Moseley Braun (in 2004), and Hillary Clinton (in 2008 and 2016), and Republicans Michele Bachmann (in 2012) and Carly Fiorina (in 2016); there had never been more than one woman on the debate stage at one time, and there had never been more than two women running per party at one time.[11] In the 2020 presidential election cycle, Dr. Jo Jorgenson was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, and a record-breaking six women ran for president in the Democratic Party: Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, and author Marianne Williamson. The initial night of the first Democratic primary debate, which took place on June 26–27, 2019, marked a major milestone, as it featured three women: Warren, Klobuchar, and Gabbard; Harris, Gillibrand, and Williamson participated on the second night.[12]

The Green Party has run a female candidate three times, Cynthia McKinney in 2008 and Jill Stein in 2012 and 2016. Stein is currently the female candidate with the second-most votes in a general election, having received nearly 1.5 million votes in 2016.

Two women have won the vice-presidential nominations of major parties, Geraldine Ferraro for the Democratic Party in 1984, and Sarah Palin for the Republican Party in 2008.

Dr. Jo Jorgensen is the Libertatian party's Presidential candidate for the 2020 election. The 2020 Democratic Party vice presidential nominee is set to be the third female major party vice presidential nominee in United States history, following Ferraro in 1984 and Palin in 2008, as presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has fully committed to selecting a female running mate.[13]

• List of fictional United States Presidents
• List of elected and appointed female heads of state and government
• Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (sometimes nicknamed "the first female president of the United States.")

• Freeman, Jo, The Women Who Ran for President (2007)
• Maurer, Elizabeth. "First but Not the Last: Women who Ran for President". National Women's History Museum. 2016.