When Texas Democrat Erica Lee Carter was sworn in this week to serve the final weeks of the 118th Congress, it set a new record for women’s representation in Congress.
It won’t last.
Women will likely hold fewer seats in the 119th Congress next January, a departure from gains in most elections including the last six, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of the Nov. 5 election results.
Including Rep. Carter, women hold a record 152 seats in the House and Senate, or 28% out of 535. While some House races remain too close to call, women can only match that total if both Reps. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) and Michelle Steel (R-Calif) are re-elected, which is unlikely. Not since the 1970s have women experienced a net loss of seats in Congress.
The final result will be more in line with the minimal gains women made in the 2022 election than to above-average increases in 2018, when Democratic women did well in elections midway through Donald Trump’s first White House term, and in 2020, when Republicans recovered to more than double the number of GOP women in the House.
“Just because we see monumental gains in one cycle doesn’t mean they persist without concerted effort, especially when women remain underrepresented in the candidate pool as well as among elected officials,” Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said in an interview.
Fewer women on Capitol Hill, particularly within the GOP ranks, could make it harder for advocates to advance legislation on issues such as child care, health care and education that have been priorities of female lawmakers.
Fewer Women Ran
The 259 women who were major-party nominees for House seats in 2024 was down one from 260 in 2022 and lower than the record 298 in the 2020 election, according to CAWP data. Those 259 nominees emerged from a pool of 467 women who sought House seats, a 20% decline from the record 583 women who ran for the House in both 2020 and 2022.
Dittmar noted a record high of women’s departures from Congress this year and that a perception of Congress as dysfunctional and a more “toxic” political environment may have dissuaded some women from running.
In a warning sign for the GOP, the drop in House candidacies from 2022 was much greater among Republican women than Democratic women. The number of female House Republican nominees shrank to 68 from 82 in 2022, while female Democratic nominees rose to 191 from 178.
That helps explain why the partisan gap of women in the House — now 93 Democrats and 34 Republicans — will widen in the 119th Congress. The House freshman class will include at least 16 Democratic women and just two Republican women, Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota and Sheri Biggs of South Carolina.
“Certainly, I’d love to have more women in the Republican Conference,” Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) said. “But right now, we have amazing candidates across the board, and we picked up some great women to replace the ones that are leaving.”
Making Congress more family-friendly could spur more women to run. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a 35-year-old mother, would change House rules to allow new mothers in Congress to vote by proxy.
“If that doesn’t change, you’re going to keep having women my age not serving, because we then would have to choose between working and a family,” she said.
Some Democratic women who fell short this year may be emboldened to try again in 2026, when their party will be favored to make gains at the midpoint of Trump’s next term as they did in the 2018 election. “We need to make sure when they run, that they’re willing to run twice,” said Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who won in 2018 on her second try.
“There were thousands of women who were running for office in all levels of government,” said Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who was also first elected in 2018. “And I feel like you’re going to see that maybe in the next midterm.”
Status Quo Senate
It was a status-quo election year for women in the Senate. There will be 25 women — 16 Democrats and nine Republicans — serving in that chamber next year, the same number as now.
They very nearly lost ground.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) all won close races against Republican men; Slotkin will succeed retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D). Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) won an unexpectedly close race against independent Dan Osborn. Retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) will be succeeded by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D), who edged Kari Lake (R).
Women gained with wins by Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), who are replacing retiring Democratic men and will become the first two Black women to serve together in the Senate. The three Black women who have served in the Senate include Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who’s serving on an interim basis and will be succeeded by Rep. Adam Schiff (D).
Seven female senators are up for re-election in 2026 including five-term Maine Republican Susan Collins, the longest-serving Republican woman in the history of the Senate and the only Republican senator from a state Trump lost in 2024.
Along with Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks, other women made history in the 2024 congressional election. Fedorchak will become the first woman to represent her state in the House, leaving Mississippi as the only state yet to elect a woman to that chamber. Rep.-elect Nellie Pou (D-N.J.) will be the first Latina to serve her state in Congress. Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum (D) will become the first Black woman in Congress from her state after unseating Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R).
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