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| Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) |
The differential between House Republican women and House Democratic women wasn't always so stark (currently there are 88 Democratic women in the House and just 13 Republican women). Up until the mid-90's the numbers between the two were much more even. Since then, though, Republicans have not kept pace, and even seen the percentage of Republican women in their caucus drop (they hit a high of 25 women twice in the past two decades).
It's worth noting that in 2020, the House Republicans are at least acknowledging this problem. Rep. Elise Stefanik has made a point of supporting women in primaries, and pushing NRCC Chair Tom Emmer to better highlight women to close some of the gap in terms of gender inequity in their caucus (as the Republicans are not going to start winning back women voters if would-be female Republicans don't see a place for themselves in the party). This cycle has seen, as a result, the largest ever number of women running for the House as Republicans. But there's a big difference between fielding female candidates and actually electing them, and it's worth asking if this is all for show or if it will actually yield tangible results.
So we're going to take a look at the women here in the same way we did the House Democrats, by breaking down the three ways that women are able to improve their numbers in the House-through winning open seats that the party currently holds, through reelecting their current members, and by supporting challengers to vulnerable incumbents (that "vulnerable" part is crucial, because it doesn't matter if a Republican woman is running in a seat that she has no chance of actually winning). Since we put a question around the House Democrats (will they hit 100?), we'll do the same here-will the House Republicans have twenty female members come November (a net gain of seven)?
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| Mayor Beth van Duyne (R-TX) |
There are significantly more Republican retirements this year than Democrats, a strong indicator that (at least in DC) the mood indicates that the Republicans will not regain control of the US House. However, the best way to increase the number of Republican women would be through nominating them for safe open seats.
There are two Republican women (Martha Roby & Susan Brooks) who are retiring this cycle, so take that down to a net two for a second, and so far, the Republicans have nominated just three women for the 27 open seats, only one of whom (Mary Miller in Illinois) is nominated in a seat she's guaranteed to win in November. The other two candidates (Victoria Spartz in IN-5 and Beth van Duyne in TX-24) could win, but it's worth noting that the Republicans put them in two open seats that pretty much every pundit considers a tossup. This was a problem in 2018 as well, where Republicans put up female candidates in tossup seats in Arizona, California, and South Carolina where they ended up losing on Election Day (which won't get them any actual new members in the US House).
Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Tennessee all have primaries still to come that feature female challengers, so we could be seeing more Republican women there, but looking deep into the races, not all offer promising options. Marjorie Greene (whom you may remember) could be nominated in Georgia, but the GOP would prefer she not be for obvious reasons (again, click the link), and unless there's an upset there's no other race that feels like a female candidate could get nominated. It's worth noting that Lauren Boebert defeated incumbent-Rep. Scott Tipton in Colorado, but Boebert's far-right views & links to the conspiracy theory group QAnon put that district at risk. All-in-all, the Republicans at best are going to get a net of 1-2 seats here, and it's possible they actually lose ground with Republican women in the caucus based on just open seats.
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| Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) |
You would think, considering there are just 11 women running for reelection in the House GOP, that there would be no chance that the Republicans could lose ground in a second bucket, but you'd be wrong. Most of the Republican women are, in my opinion, pretty safe, including people like Stefanik whom Democrats wish were vulnerable (and are funding her opponent as if she was, basically setting a stack of money on fire), but there's no evidence that Stefanik won't win another term in her seat short of a proper scandal or a much bigger Biden landslide than any polling currently suggests.
Where the Republicans are vulnerable, though, is in Missouri. Rep. Ann Wagner is a powerful incumbent, but she's running for reelection in the type of seat that Donald Trump not only didn't win by as much as Mitt Romney (a drop from 16-points to 11), but also that he's lost serious heat in since the 2016 election: it's a wealthy, college-educated suburban district surrounding St. Louis. This is a seat that Claire McCaskill, even while she was losing statewide, still carried in 2018, and even against an under-sung opponent in 2018, Wagner only won by four-points. It remains to be seen if MO-2 will vote for Trump or Biden, but Wagner can't count on Trump winning here like she did in 2016, and her opponent is much better-touted in 2020. Some will also claim that Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington is vulnerable, but if a House GOP woman loses this cycle, it's going to be Wagner.
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| State Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) |
All of this is to say that the Republicans might, in the first two buckets, have at best a net of 1-2 seats-not great considering how hard they're touting all of the women who are running for the House, and a pretty steep climb if they want to hit 20 when the popular vote seems certain to go to Joe Biden, and likely by a decent margin.
Looking at the 25 or so Democratic-held districts that feel plausibly competitive (and not just "stretch" competitive, which in 2020 with the current GOP environment I don't think is an option for the Republicans unless there's a late-breaking scandal for an incumbent), the GOP did put up some female challengers. CA-39, CA-48, GA-6, IA-1, IA-2, MN-7, NY-11, NY-22, OK-5, PA-7, and SC-1 all either have nominated Republican women or seem destined to do so (MI-8 could go with a female Republican, but I'm not betting on it), so a little less than half of these seats will have female challengers.
The big problem here is this-it is very hard to beat a House incumbent during a presidential election if that incumbent's party's nominee (Joe Biden) is winning the district, even if it's by just a slim margin. The power of incumbency combined with increased straight-ticket voting basically requires a scandal in this case, which none of the Democrats in these districts have. As Joe Biden is performing better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton, it's not a stretch to assume that Biden will carry every district that Clinton won in 2016 (this might not happen, but I'd put money on it happening). This would take both of the California seats and PA-7 off of the menu. It's also not a stretch to assume Biden will win GA-6, so I'd remove that from the lineup as well.
That leaves just seven seats that the Republicans could take with female challengers, and that's assuming that Biden doesn't take some stretch seats (other than MN-7 and NY-22, it's plausible he could have enough strength to carry any of the others, particularly the two Iowa seats or NY-11, which all three went for Obama in 2012). I think that at least a couple of Republican women will win here. Ashley Hinson in IA-1, Michelle Fischbach in MN-7, and Stephanie Bice in OK-5 are strong candidates, and ones we shouldn't count out here. But it's pretty telling that unless the Republicans can pretty much sweep their targets here, they won't hit 20 Republican women in the House this November, and it's possible they don't gain almost any ground with only Mary Miller assured a freshman seat in the next Congress.
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| Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) |
The Republicans are playing almost entirely defense this year, so it's difficult to imagine them improving on their count in the Senate, which is nine senators (a significantly more impressive ratio than in the US House). However, it's almost certain that the Republican women will lose members in the US Senate in 2020. That's because some of the biggest opportunities for Democratic pickups are happening in seats held by Republican women.
Sen. Martha McSally (AZ) is the most vulnerable. McSally hasn't led in a non-partisan poll since July of 2019, and has been routinely out-raised by her opponent, astronaut Mark Kelly; in fact, Kelly frequently beats McSally in matchup polls by double digits. I struggle to see Kelly getting to double digits in a presidential election even in shifting Arizona, but I also can't see a path for McSally to win reelection-I think this is an obvious net loss for the Senate Republican women.
The other incumbents are on better ground, but still shaky. Sens. Joni Ernst (IA) and Susan Collins (ME) are both in tossup races, and will be lucky to win at this point (neither have led in a non-partisan poll in their states since their states' primaries), and while Sen. Kelly Loeffler's seat might not be as vulnerable, her hold on it certainly is. Polling shows Loeffler consistently losing to Rep. Doug Collins (R) in a top-two runoff, and while she can hope that the Democrats don't coalesce around Rev. Raphael Warnock (who so far has struggled to put away the Democratic lane of this primary), Warnock is sitting on a fortune & my instincts say that he'll make it to a runoff even if he might ultimately lose said runoff.
The one sure gain for the Republicans in the Senate comes from Wyoming. There, Sen. Mike Enzi is retiring, and will be replaced by a woman, former-Rep. Cynthia Lummis. Unless Ernst wins (and the Republicans pickup one of the Dem-held House seats in Iowa), this will make Wyoming & West Virginia the only states in the nation to have Republican women in both the House & Senate come November.
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