Elizabeth Banks said she does not understand the 53% of White women who voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, using a Bustle podcast episode posted Tuesday to press her case that more women should think like the character she played in The Hunger Games. “Effie is the model, guys! I don’t understand the 53% of White ladies that didn’t vote for Kamala. What were you thinking!” Banks said.
The comment landed in the middle of a broader pitch from Banks, who urged women to emulate Effie Trinket and added, “I wish more of us were becoming revolutionaries!” In the films, Effie begins as a polished supporter of a dystopian system that she benefits from, then comes to care about the cruelty of that system when Katniss and Peeta are about to be pulled back into the games. Banks said, “It’s not until she really comes to care for and see how unfair it is when they want to pull Katniss and Peeta into the games again,” drawing a line from the character’s arc to her own political view.
The backdrop is clear enough. Post-election analysis by the Pew Research Center confirmed that a majority of White women did cast ballots for Trump in 2024, the same year Banks had already publicly backed Harris. Less than a month before Election Day, she joined Harris’ Reproductive Freedom Bus in Las Vegas to campaign for abortion access, posting on Instagram, “19 DAYS until we elect @kamalaharris President of the United States! I joined my friends at @reproforallnv yesterday and jumped on Kamala’s Reproductive Freedom Bus in Las Vegas,”
That makes Banks part of the celebrity circle still trying to explain a defeat that many supporters saw as a warning sign rather than a one-off setback. Her reference to Effie, a character who appears in all four films in the original Hunger Games franchise, sharpened the point: she is arguing that people who benefit from a system can still turn against it once the cost becomes impossible to ignore.
What she does not explain is why that turn did not happen for millions of White women in 2024. Banks said she wanted more revolutionaries. The election showed how far she still has to go looking for them.
