A record number of women have won major party nominations for governor in 2018. And for the House. But it doesn’t stop there. State legislatures may get less attention than Congress (with some notable exceptions), but they make laws that affect many of us day to day … and they, too, are poised to get a wave of women in November’s elections:
In Michigan, for example, a state that proved pivotal in electing President Donald Trump in 2016, only 23 percent of state lawmakers are women. But this year, a woman will appear on the Michigan ballot for governor, attorney general, secretary of state and in 63 percent of the state’s Senate seats and 71 percent of its House seats.
Nationally, if women candidates are as successful as they have been for the past two decades - their historic rate of victory is about 60 percent - the number of women in state legislatures could reach an all-time high of about 40 percent, according to an analysis by Reuters of state ballots and historic campaigns.
It probably doesn’t need to be said that a majority of the women running for state legislature are Democrats, but the size of the imbalance may still be a surprise: there are 1,586 Democratic women and just 655 Republican women running for state legislature nationwide, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. The number of those women who are incumbents is relatively close: 498 Democrats and 306 Republicans. The gulf really opens up when you look at challengers and candidates running for open seats, which highlights the change that 2018 could bring to the American political landscape.