In 2018, we saw an election with a record-breaking number of women running for office. This year, that record has been broken once again. According to The Hill, over 570 women are running for office during the 2020 election.
574 women have filed to run for primaries for House seats and 58 women have filed to run for primaries in the Senate. This is a 20 percent increase from 2018, which had 476 House candidates and 53 Senate candidates.
This is a major uptick in female representation when it comes to politics. A large number of the female candidates who are running for Congress are a part of the Republican Party, and the number of Republican female candidates has nearly doubled since 2018. Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokesperson for Winning For Women, a PAC that fights supports conservative female candidates said that “2018 saw the rise of the Democrat women. A lot of Republican women thought it could be our year next year, and if they can do it, we can do it.”
One of the reasons that Republican woman candidates might be increasing is because the Republican Party has faltered when it comes to the female voter base since 2016, and this is their way of trying to get back lost ground with the female voters. According to recent polls, Biden is leading Trump among women.
Of the female candidates, 104 are running as incumbents such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar, who all ran in 2018. These four congresswomen also make up what is known informally as “The Squad.”
Despite this achievement, women still make up less than a quarter of Congress.
Header image via Wikimedia Commons / Victorgrigas
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