Now that primary season has ended, the full extent of this year’s record-breaking number of women running for the House couldn’t be clearer: As you can see above, the number of Democratic women winning a place on the November ballot has exploded, according to numbers tabulated by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, reaching 181 182 in total (final number, now that the count in MA-03 is final), excluding one candidate who has withdrawn. (They’re also kicking ass in the fundraising department.) And historically, about half of women nominated for the House have won; indeed, half of the women who ran in special elections this cycle have won as well.
In addition, we have reached parity in the races with new faces: Fully half of Democrats running in open seats or against Republican incumbents are women. And it’s not just long-shot districts, either. Half of the Democrats running in races Daily Kos Elections rates as a “Tossup” are women.
It’s about damn time.
On the flip side, Republicans aren’t exactly doing too well when it comes to women running for the House. The number of candidates has been slowly increasing, although the increase has been very gradual in more recent years. Perhaps that reflects a recent Pew poll showing that half of Republicans are ambivalent about more women running for Congress, and one in 10 even think it’s a bad thing.
Please give $1 today to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed women running for the House!
So it’s no wonder that no more than a fifth of the Republican nominees in any category—and fewer than one in ten incumbents!—are women:
Here’s where Democratic women are running for the House, from our spreadsheet of all House candidates:
And the Republicans:
We still have a long way to go before women are equally represented in Congress, but if Democrats have a strong showing this fall, we’ll make big strides.