Women Candidates Are Key to Building Democratic Power

Women were responsible for 10 of 13 Democratic pick-ups in Virginia’s 2025 legislative elections, expanding the Democratic majority by 13 seats. This power-building role for Democratic women candidates is not new. 

In the 2017 election, women flipped 11 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates from Republican to Democrat. They were responsible for 11 of 15 (73.3%) total flipped seats in that cycle, narrowing the Republican majority in the House to two seats. 

One year later, in 2018, women won 21 of the 39 (53.8%) U.S. House seats that flipped from Republican to Democrat. As a result, Democrats took back the House majority from Republicans. Women also won 4 of the 7 (57.1%) gubernatorial elections that flipped state executive offices from Republican to Democrat.

In both 2017 and 2025, Democrats mobilized in response to the first year of a Trump term and a previous election cycle that saw Republican success. Women challengers fared particularly well. One-third or more of Democratic women challengers to Republican incumbents won in Virginia’s 2017 and 2025 House elections. The win rate for Democratic men challengers was less than 16% in both cycles. 

In 2018, 15 of the 21 Democratic women who flipped U.S. House seats defeated Republican incumbents. That year, all four Democratic women who flipped party control of gubernatorial seats won open-seat contests.

Virginia’s 2017 election results foreshadowed the success that Democratic women had nationwide in 2018. 
Will 2025 be a similar harbinger for Democratic women’s electability in 2026?

Similarities in the political environment – midterm elections after two years of complete Republican control at the federal level, concern over actions taken in the first two years of Trump’s term, and potential lingering frustration over the loss of a woman nominee for president – might yield comparable energy.

But the politics of 2026 are also distinct from eight years prior. New congressional maps will shape political opportunities by party, heightened perceptions of risk for elected officials can disparately impact women, and concerns over polarization and gridlock might dissuade those who are motivated most by results to seek elective offices. 
 

Stay tuned for more on women in U.S. elections at CAWP’s Election Watch.