Was This Another Year of the Woman? More Than a Quarter of All Candidates Running for Congress or Governor This Year Were Women

By Jo Freeman

In the weeks leading up to the November 6 election, many commentators said this would be another Year of the Woman. The first year to get that label was 1992 when 11 women were major party candidates for the Senate and 106 ran for Representative.  Seven female Senators and 47 Representatives served in the subsequent 103rd Congress (1993-5). This was a great leap upward from previous Congresses.

The Senate Democratic women in 1993.  L-R: Murray, Moseley Braun, Mikulski, Feinstein, Boxer. As of 2018, Senator Feinstein and Senator Murray are still active members of the Senate; Wikipedia

While some races are still too close to call, 2018 also saw a great leap upward in the number of women running and winning.  More than a quarter of all candidates running for Congress or Governor this year were women (272 of 964).

What 1992 has in common with 2018 is that these candidates were overwhelmingly Democrats. For the Democratic Party, this was another year of the woman; not so much for the Republicans. In November, Democratic women ran for 93 seats and won nearly half.  Republican women ran for 13 and won less than a quarter.

This was not always true. Three decades ago female Members of Congress were more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. The big shift occurred with the 1992 election. In allmost every election since then more women run as Democrats and more Democratic women win.

Women continue to vote at greater rates than men. This year women were 52 percent of all those who voted, but 62 percent of Democratic voters. Women have been about 60 percent of Democratic voters for some time. The slight increase in women voting Democratic did not account for the significant increase in women winning elections, though it helped.