Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024: Where We Stand

For the first time, the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, has been tracking gender and campaign finance during a live election cycle. Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024 analyzes campaign contributions from a candidate and donor perspective and examines differences and disparities for women as contributors and recipients, with additional insight into race and ethnicity in campaign finance.

CAWP will share details about Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024, alongside additional information about women in election 2024, at a virtual press conference on July 17th at 1pm ET. This press conference will provide data on women candidates and nominees this year, comparisons to previous election cycles, and trends we’re watching as we reach the midway point in the 2024 primaries.

Register to Attend

Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024 Resources:

• The State View: A Deep Dive into 10 States. This resource contains fundraising recipient (candidate) information for congressional races in 10 key focus states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. It also provides similar information for state candidates for eight of these 10 states. State candidate fundraising data for Florida and Massachusetts will be added to this resource later in July.
• Donor Gaps: Demographics Analysis. This section examines the participation of women donors with additional detail about race/ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, and party affiliation. We also investigate how these donor characteristics correspond to recipient gender and party.
• COMING SOON: The National View: Congressional Elections. This resource, set to be released in August, will provide an analysis of campaign contributions to major-party congressional candidates in all 50 states.

Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024 Selected Early Analysis:

Candidates

• Men candidates running for U.S. House seats in our ten focus states usually report a larger share of funds from self-financing than women. This points to a significant barrier to women’s political participation — party gatekeepers value self-financed candidates because they are less reliant on party resources.
• Women incumbent and challenger candidates running for the U.S. House in our ten focus states usually raise more of their funds from small contributions than men candidates.

Donors

• In eight of our ten focus states (AZ, FL, GA, MI, NM, OH, PA, WA), the total amount of men’s contributions exceeded women’s contributions; men usually provided about 60% of all money contributed to the state’s congressional candidates.
• However, in all of our ten focus states, women comprised about half if not a majority of unique contributors to congressional candidates.
• Women are better represented as contributors to Democratic than Republican congressional candidates in all ten focus states.
• Within both parties, men are better represented than women as contributors who gave $1,000 or more to congressional candidates in all ten focus states.
• Women outnumber men as contributors who gave $200 or less to Democratic congressional candidates in all ten focus states.
• Women donors from historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups are especially underrepresented as donors to congressional candidates in our ten focus states.

Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024 uses interactive data visualizations powered by Graphicacy that are downloadable and shareable; follow the story as it develops on the project landing page. This project is part of the CAWP Women, Money, and Politics series, undertaken in collaboration with OpenSecrets; previous reports in the series can be found here. This research is made possible thanks to the generosity and commitment of Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company. Find all CAWP data about women in election 2024 at Election Watch.