Hillary Clinton fails to rally women in bid to make history

Hillary Clinton made the prospect of her being elected the first woman president of the US a centrepiece of her campaign, then lost a critical nominating contest to a 74-year-old man, Bernie Sanders, in part because women preferred him.

Young women contributed significantly to Clinton’s loss, and the candidate acknowledged that she struggled with young voters.

“I know I have some work to do, particularly with young people,” Clinton said during a concession speech.

“Even if they are not supporting me now, I support them.”

With women over 45, Clinton prevailed with 56% of the vote, ABC News exit polls found, but Sanders won 69% among women under 45.

Among women under 30, Sanders won a staggering 82%.

Unlike Barack Obama — who played down his African-American roots when elected the first black president eight years ago — in this election cycle Clinton, 68, has emphasised the breakthrough a November 8 victory would represent for women.

At nearly every campaign stop in New Hampshire, Clinton or a supporter emphasised the role she could play as the first woman in the White House while Sanders galvanised young people with his vow to fix an economy he said was rigged in favour of the wealthy.

Clinton said she was trying to break the “hardest, highest glass ceiling”.

She campaigned alongside four women US senators, New Hampshire governor Maggie Hassan and Lilly Ledbetter, the woman for whom an equal-pay law is named.

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright reprised her line that “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other” while introducing Clinton at a campaign rally on Saturday.

Clinton told a young woman the same day that she has to walk a “narrower path” because she has “got to be aware of the fact that I’m trying to be the first woman president of the United States of America, and there has never been one before, and so people don’t have, you know, an image”.

The remarks by Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state, and others by feminist icon Gloria Steinem were assailed as disparaging by young women supporters of Sanders.

Steinem had said young women were drawn to Sanders because that was where the boys were.

With the next nominating contests in Nevada and South Carolina, Clinton will seek to lift her standing among women.

Katherine Wilbur, 20, a geography major at the University of South Carolina from Hopkins, South Carolina, said she had yet to decide on a candidate or party.

“I think that’s ridiculous. It’s 2016,” Wilbur said of the suggestion that women should vote for other women.

“It’s not important to me.”

Paige Lambert, 23, who volunteered for the Sanders campaign in New Hampshire, said she thought the remarks by Steinem and Albright were sexist.

“I don’t think I should have to vote for a woman because I am a woman.

"If I would have thought she’d do better, I would have voted for her. I’m not just going to vote for her because she’s a woman.”

To @BernieSanders, congratulations. To New Hampshire, thank you. And to our volunteers: I’m so grateful for what you built. Now, onward. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 10, 2016