Women’s electoral success may inspire others to run for political office
If we have learned anything from women’s experience as candidates this election cycle, it is that when women run, they win — women are competitive candidates, attract significant fundraising dollars and are supported by voters.
A record number of women ran for political office in 2018, and as a result, a record number will serve as senators, representatives, governors and state legislators next year.
The 116th Congress will include more than 100 women in the House of Representatives, surpassing the previous record of 84 in the 115th. Twelve women were elected to the Senate; including the 10 women currently serving, the new Senate will include 22 female senators. Across the states, nine women were elected governors (the previous number was six).
Many of these women are firsts in other ways — including the first Native American and Muslim women and the youngest woman ever elected to the House (Alexandria OcasioCortez is 29). The Political Year of the Woman reaches across racial, ethnic, sexual orientation and religious lines.
Women’s gains in Congress come with historic consequences for Pennsylvania. The state had no (that’s, zero) women in its 18-person congressional delegation. Next year, the Lehigh Valley’s Susan Wild will join three other women representing Pennsylvania in the House. Women ran and won in significant numbers in the state Legislature too, bumping the percentage of women in Harrisburg to 24 percent.
Women’s electoral success is both cause and consequence of the increased salience of women’s issues in the 2018 election cycle.
We researched all of the federal and Pennsylvania races in which women were candidates. Our findings show that roughly one-half of the women who ran for federal office campaigned on a message of women’s rights, including issues linked to reproductive rights, equal pay, paid parental leave, expanding affordable health care and ending gender violence.
Women running in statewide races were somewhat less likely to emphasize women’s rights in their campaign messages, but many stressed their own identities as mothers, grandmothers and daughters and linked their campaigns to the health and well-being of families.
Female candidates’ campaign messages were echoed by what voters had to say at the exit polls on Election Day. Close to 80 percent of voters, including both men and women, agreed that it is important to elect women to public office — perhaps reflecting a rare point of consensus in an otherwise polarized political environment. More than onehalf of all voters also indicated that sexual harassment is a serious problem facing our nation.
Crafting campaign messages around women’s issues is good strategy for any candidate because, simply put, women matter as voters. As they have for some time, women comprised a larger share of the 2018 electorate than men and they were more likely to vote Democratic.
The national exit poll as reported by CNN estimates that 59 percent of women voted Democratic on Nov. 6, compared with 47 percent of men — a 12-point gender gap. That a gender gap exists across race, age, income and education groups suggests that gender identity clearly matters to electoral politics.
Of course, gender is not the whole story. Voters’ party attachments are strongly predictive of vote choice. Only 6 percent of Republican women, for example, voted for the Democratic House candidates. Conversely, only 3 percent of Democratic women voted for the Republican candidate.
What is the lasting significance of the Political Year of the Woman? Increasing women’s representation is an important step toward building a more inclusive, and more representative, democracy.
Newly elected female officeholders may bring fresh perspectives to American elective institutions, a reflection of their diverse routes to political office from careers as far-ranging as teachers, journalists, veterans, community organizers, farmers, lawyers, actors and small-business owners.
Among the most significant consequence of the 2018 elections, in our thinking, is the potential for female candidates and officeholders to inspire more women, especially young women, to get involved in politics.
In signaling that elections are no longer a man’s game, female candidates and officeholders make it possible for young women to see themselves as political actors, to develop their own political interest, and perhaps to imagine a future in which they become candidates and officeholders themselves.
Taylor Garrison is a history major and member of the Muhlenberg College Class of 2020, Emma Lewis is a political science major and member of the Muhlenberg Class of 2019, and Lanethea Mathews-Schultz is professor and chairwoman of political science at Muhlenberg. They are working on a project examining messaging, campaign finance and voter mobilization in electoral contests in which women ran in 2018.