Election Alert: Women Winning Primaries in Record Numbers

No doubt about it, 2018 has been an historic year for women in U.S. politics, and the momentum may well carry us to some amazing wins at the midterms. So far, this round of elections has set new records for the number of female candidates who have filed run for office, as well as for the share of women who won primaries in House and Senate contests. What’s more, the number of women winning primaries to be their state’s governor has also reached new heights.

The number of Democratic women House candidates has more than doubled since 2016.

Much has been written about how more women decided to run since Trump’s election and after the Women’s March. Prior to those events, consider how an article in The New York Times described the outlook: “The main reason they are so underrepresented is that they don’t run in the first place. …The number of women serving in office stalled in the 1990s. Women now make up 19 percent of members of Congress, 25 percent of state legislators, 12 percent of governors and 18 percent of mayors.”