(RepublicanInformer.com)- While America has yet to catch up with the United Kingdom in terms of female leadership – the country has already had two female Conservative Prime Ministers – there have been many instances over the decades where a woman has run for president and won a substantial number of votes.
Let’s take a look at the top five.
1. Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, former first lady under the Bill Clinton administration and Secretary of State under the Barack Obama administration, ran an unsuccessful presidential election campaign in 2016. Clinton ultimately lost the election based on Electoral College votes, though takes every opportunity she can to remind people that she won the popular vote.
Clinton received 65,853,615 votes in the 2016 election, but lost after failing to capture the support of middle America.
2. Jill Stein
Jill Stein also ran in the 2016 election, but for the Green Party. The veteran left-wing activist ran a campaign designed to attract left-wing and progressive voters who might have otherwise been turned off by Hillary Clinton and her style of politics. During the campaign, she called the Republicans and the Democrats “two corporate parties” that were effectively the same.
Stein won a respectable 1,57,044 votes, but ultimately came nowhere close to winning the presidency.
Stein also ran in 2012 for the Green Party, taking 468,907 votes.
3. Lenora Fulani
In 1988. Lenora Fulani ran for president on the New Alliance Party ticket. The American psychologist and political activist was the first woman, and African American, to be on the ballot in all fifty states. Fulani received almost a quarter of a million votes.
In 1990, she ran as a candidate in the New York gubernatorial election, and received the support of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam.
4. Cynthia McKinney
In 2008, running against newcomer Barack Obama, African American woman Cynthia McKinney ran for the Green Party. Unlike Stein, who topped a million votes, McKinney took home a more modest 161,797 votes in that election.
Given the huge victory for Barack Obama, however, it was always unlikely she would pick up significant support in 2008.
These are just the top four, but many other women have run for election before. Some of these are big names, too, including actress and comedian Roseanne Barr who also ran in 2012 for the Peace and Freedom Party, and even Gracie Allen, the comedian who ran for president for the “Surprise Party” in 1940
