We’re coming to a close in House primaries for 2020 and women have broken last cycle’s record for the most nominees in history. While 2018 saw 235 total women nominees, 2020’s total comes out to 299 (totals collected via Ballotpedia). This surge comes from more Republican women winning their primaries, bumping up to 94 women from only 53 last cycle. Democrats have almost reached gender parity with men among the candidates with 205 women nominees or women who have advanced to a jungle primary. Considering that Democrats currently have 89 women in the House and Republicans just have 13, the Republican caucus has worked, at least nominally, top diversify their caucus. One of the stats the leaders love to tout is the number of Republican women who have both filed to run or won their primaries. And at this stage it appears to have paid off and more are advancing to the next round. However, a closer look shows that they may not be able to expand the number of women in their caucus by too much. The chart below shows the number of women nominees for each party by the rating from University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
While the Democrats are evenly spread out across the spectrum of seats with plenty of guaranteed wins, over half of the Republican women are virtually guaranteed to lose. With some success recently saving them, early struggles and runoff losses meant that Republican women didn’t capture a lot of open safe seats until this past month of primaries. A lot of women have filed and run but as of now we seem to be heading into the general election with each side only looking to make marginal gains to their women’s caucuses, and Republicans continuing to struggle.
Noah Rudnick (@rudnicknoah) is a contributor to Decision Desk HQ.