Why Can’t the GOP Elect Women to Office?
Conservative PACs desperately trying to get more Republican women elected have their work cut out for them
Every election cycle Republican groups try to elect more women, and every cycle in which Democrats surge into power they fall further behind.
In 1993, after the original Year of the Woman, there were 14 Republican women in Congress, and 40 Democratic ones.
In 2007, after Democrats retook the House, there were 25 Republicans and 63 Democrats.
In 2019, after another Democratic wave year, there were 21 Republicans and 106 Democrats.
Congress is still far from achieving gender parity, but it’s Democrats that have made most of the progress in getting it anywhere close. Democratic women make up 83% of women elected to Congress, and if women were elected only at the rate Republican women are, all of Congress would still be about 4% female-even less than it was in 1992.
For conservative women, it’s still the 1980s.
The persistent inability of the GOP to elect women has stymied generations of political operatives and would-be politicians. But that hasn’t stopped conservative women from trying. And in 2020, a fresh group of faces will try again to roll the…
