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It's been almost 100 years since women were guaranteed the right to vote nationwide. And after all this time, a little less than a quarter of the legislators in our state capitals are women.
The recent victory of Cyndi Munson in her state house race in Oklahoma, making her just the 15th woman in that chamber, led us to wonder exactly what the current representation looks like across the country.
Fortunately, several organizations have churned through the data, including the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Unsurprisingly, there's a partisan component to this story: Democratic state legislators are twice as likely to be women as Republican state legislators.
Keep reading to see how this plays out state by state. There are a few surprises.
At first, we thought a plot showing the relationship between the percent of women in the legislature and the percent of Democrats in the legislature would be revealing. And it was—but not in quite the way we thought.
The relationship is not very strong. Also, there seem to be some regional patterns. Most of the West has more women than you might expect. And the South: Not doing so well. But Massachusetts and Rhode Island aren't doing too much better. They have a lower share of women in their legislatures than Idaho.
It's time for some more maps, this time by party:
Republicans have higher numbers than average in the West and New England. Hawaii only has eight Republicans, four of whom are women, for the highest proportion among the GOP.
Democrats have their best numbers in Utah, along with much of the West and Vermont. The worst numbers for Democrats swing along a familiar arc that follows Appalachia and the Upland South from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma.
Interestingly, there's little difference in the share of seats women occupy between Republicans and Democrats along that same arc, plus New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. You can see numbers for each state here.
Altogether these maps bring to mind another map from 100 years ago: The one that shows the states where women were allowed to vote in 1914, six years prior to ratification of the 19th Amendment.