The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) has tracked women’s political candidacies for three decades. Since 2004, CAWP has collected women candidates’ racial identification, relying primarily on candidate self-identification. This year, we are reporting this data pre-election and in greater depth than we have before, providing summary information on...

Women’s gains to Congress in the 2018 midterm elections were party specific. That year nearly three dozen new Democratic women, and just one Republican woman, were elected to the U.S. House. As Republican women’s membership in the House shrunk to 13, Representative Elise Stefanik (NY-21) promised to “play in primaries” to increase the number of Republican...

Congressional and statewide primaries were held on Tuesday in five states: Georgia, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, West Virginia. Full context about women in the 2020 elections, including candidate lists, summaries, results from previous primaries, and historical comparisons, are available via the Center for American Women and Politics’ Election Watch...

The 2020 sub-presidential primary election season kicked off on March 3rd with congressional and statewide primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas. But within weeks of those contests, the COVID-19 pandemic created entirely new electoral conditions across the country. In addition to shifting to mail-in voting as the primary mode...

With Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee, there has been speculation about who he will choose to be his running mate. Biden has pledged that his vice-presidential pick will be a woman stating , “There are a number of women who qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president.” After making this commitment in mid...

These days, hand-shaking, baby kissing, and door-knocking are scary and flout social distancing rules. The traditional ways candidates literally reach out and touch voters have been put on hold due to the coronavirus. No more direct contact means it’s necessary to master the art of being a virtual candidate. Making the shift to online campaigning isn’t as...

We know that women are on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. According the U.S. Census Bureau , women hold 76% of all heath care jobs. More specifically, women are over 85% of registered nurses nationwide, dominating one of the groups battling coronavirus via patient care in hospitals nationwide. Women are also 31 of 50 (62%) of state health...

With one year to go until Election Day 2020, the Center for American Women and Politics has asked experts in gender and politics – scholars and practitioners alike – to provide their outlooks for the gender and intersectional dynamics to watch in the next year. See their contributions below and stay tuned to CAWP’s Election Watch throughout the campaign for...

In the three years since Hillary Clinton “put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” the question remains, “Can America elect a woman president?” There have been countless thought pieces diving into the nuance of of the presidential campaigns of the women running this year and analyzing what factors make them more or less viable than others as we march...

The drop in Republican women’s representation in the U.S. House – down to 13 women who hold just 6.6% of all Republican House seats – garnered national attention amidst what was otherwise perceived as a “year of the woman” in American politics. But the problem of Republican women’s underrepresentation is not isolated to Congress. Not only are Republican...