Press Release

"Democratic women can count on having the support they need to run well and will be more likely to take the step to run because of that support," said Melody Crowder-Meyer, a political scientist at Davidson College, who has studied how differences in the parties' donor networks contribute to these gaps. Crowder-Meyer explained that this same support isn't found in the GOP: "Donor groups ostensibly organized around promoting Republican women's representation raise and spend dramatically less and often even use their funds to back male Republican candidates who are opposing women Democrats."

And then there's the parties' cultural divide. "The GOP party culture works against [more formal] organizing by eschewing identity-based claims for resources, support or influence," said Erin Cassese, a political scientist and associate director for the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware. This reality is reflected in recent comments made by Rep. Elise Stefanik, who founded E-PAC after the 2018 cycle to elect more Republican women to Congress. This year in Washington's 3rd District, Stefanik joined Trump in backing 2022 nominee Joe Kent (who lost that race), while GOP women's groups VIEW PAC, Maggie's List, and Winning for Women all backed Leslie Lewallen, a former King County prosecutor. "I don't endorse women just because they're women," Stefanik told NBC when asked why she backed Kent. Still, Stefanik also highlighted that Republican women have been crucial in flipping battleground districts in recent cycles.

To get a sense of the activity — and success rates — of groups formed to elect more women to office, we've tracked every candidate endorsed by EMILYs List and Republican women's groups (E-PAC, Maggie's List, Winning for Women, VIEW PAC) in incumbent-less primaries (not including runoff endorsements) in the last several election cycles, and how often those endorsed candidates won. As was true in the last two cycles, endorsements from women's groups tend to be a good sign for a primary candidate in either party: Women endorsed by at least one women's group in open primaries this year had a win rate of 67 percent, compared to women without an endorsement from a women's group, who had a win rate of 37 percent. That said, having the support of EMILYs List as a Democrat this year was a much more reliable predictor of success than an endorsement from any GOP women's group.

Read the whole article here.