Tuesday’s primaries more than doubled the expected gains by women in the next Congress. Women are now expected to gain 5.9 seats next January. As always, a full database of candidates and ratings can be found at More Women in the House.

Does the Blue Wave Mean More Congresswomen?

One question that has interested me lately: how intertwined are the Blue Wave, of Democrats overperforming in seats all over the country; and the “Pink Wave,” of women seeking Congressional seats in record numbers? After all, a few things are simultaneously true:

More than 78% of the female candidates currently set to be nominated to Congress are Democrats. This exceeds the already very high proportion of Congresswomen who are Democrats: 73% (61 out of 84).

Of the 104 non-incumbent Democratic women nominated, more than half (61) are in races not currently considered competitive by Cook Political Report.

The Blue Wave represents a threat to incumbent Republican Congresswomen. Of the 17 Republican Congresswomen, nine (53%) are rated by Cook Political as at least somewhat competitive, including two Toss-Up seats (Barbara Comstock in VA-10, Claudia Tenney in NY-22). This is a bit of a “glass cliff” phenomenon, as Republican women disproportionately represent swing seats vulnerable to a wave. About 65 (36%) male Republicans out of roughly 180 seeking reelection are facing competitive races.



So, I was curious: if the Blue Wave endangers female Republican incumbents, and many nominated female Democrats aren’t likely to win seats, does a Blue Wave mean a substantial uptick in women in the House?

The short answer? Yes.

The Chessboard

As a precursor, let’s look at the current arrangement of female nominees and their districts. A caveat to all that follows: fifteen states have yet to hold primaries, and while my data includes incumbent Congresswomen in those states, it does not include the many races that may have a female nominee (CT-5, MN-5, MN-2, AZ-2, FL-27, MA-3, …). Nonetheless, we can get a pretty good picture from results so far:

Of the nine Republican incumbents mentioned above, five are facing female Democrats in the general election. The exceptions are Tenney, Mia Love in UT-04, Ann Wagner in MO-02 and Jackie Walorski in IN-02. So even if Democrats “run the table,” only four Republican Congresswomen could plausibly lose their seats to male Democrats (and both Wagner and Walorski are in reach districts).

Republicans have nominated only five women to competitive open seats: Diane Harkey in CA-49 (Lean Democrat), Young Kim in CA-39 (Toss-Up), Yvette Herrell in NM-2 (Lean Republican), Carol Miller in WV-3 (Lean Republican) and Lena Epstein in MI-11 (Toss-Up). Herrell and Epstein face female challengers — so again, a Democratic wave only potentially blocks three seats from going to freshman Congresswoman.

By contrast, Democrats have been consistently filling competitive slots with female nominees. I count 35 non-incumbent Democratic women nominated to races rated as competitive by Cook. Twenty-eight of these women are facing male challengers, and most (19) are in the highly competitive categories of Lean R/Toss-Up/Lean D.

These facts point to a simple conclusion: many female nominees will benefit from Democratic over-performance, and comparatively few will be endangered by it

To visualize these results, we estimate the probability of a Democratic victory by the average of the current ratings from the three big election handicappers (Cook, as well as Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball), making use of the great work by the folks at the Prognosticator Tracker. Let’s start by plotting all the current nominees (where we assume all female incumbents will secure their party’s nomination):

Most seats strongly favor one party or the other. The big checkered blue bar at the left of the plot is the crop of Democratic women vying for extremely red seats. These women are unlikely to make it to Congress. The smaller red bars above it represent likely Republican Congresswomen, most of whom are incumbents. At the right of the plot, we see many more Democratic women (mostly incumbents, but some newcomers as well) who are in safe Democratic seats, along with some female Republican nominees likely to lose their races.

In the smaller pool of competitive races (those toward the middle of the plot), we see a small number of incumbent Republican Congresswomen and Republican nominees, and a larger crop of non-incumbent female Democratic contenders.

What happens in a Blue Wave?

The current ratings reflect a toss-up race for Congress, which is already a big improvement for Democrats relative to recent midterms. We consider two “Blue Wave” scenarios in which Democrats overperform the expected seat count given by the current ratings.

The “Toss Ups to the Left” Scenario

In this scenario, the list of competitive seats remains roughly the same — but on election night, these seats break dramatically toward the Democrats.

To see the effect, we filter to all races where women face male challengers (dropping the 22 races where both contenders are female), and zoom in on the competitive races. We can see immediately why this scenario benefits female representation:

Suppose Dems sweep every race rated from a 40% rating upward, while the remaining races follow their assigned probabilities (a scenario where Dems would be expected to win about 233 House seats overall). Eleven Democratic women with 40%+ probability ratings would get to Congress by defeating men, whereas only two Republican women will be defeated by Democratic men. If Dems sweep from 20% upwards, the corresponding numbers are 13 and three.

It’s simple: any such scenario helps more women than it hurts, because Dems have more nominees in competitive races against male opponents.

The “Rising Tide” Scenario

An alternative Blue Wave scenario involves an expanding map, yielding more competitive districts before Election Day. We can roughly model this scenario by supposing there is a uniform shift in probabilities toward the Democrats (up to a maximum of 100%). Below, we list the expected gains for women in Congress under a few scenarios:

Probability Shift Expected Total Dem Seats Expected # of Women in Congress (84 today) +5% R 213.1 84.7 +0% 218.3 90.3 +5% D 223.7 93.9 +10% D 228.7 97.5 +15% D 233.4 100.9

Every shift toward the Democrats yields more women in Congress — again, by the simple reason that Democrats have more women nominated and many of them are in competitive seats.

And this scenario is somewhat more “efficient,” meaning it yields more women in Congress per seat flipped to Democrats, because there are also so many Democratic women nominated in seats that aren’t currently competitive.

Conclusion

As we have seen, women’s representation in Congress stands to benefit from a Blue Wave. Democrats have nominated many more women to competitive seats, and in 85% of races where a man and a woman will be on the ballot, the woman is a Democrat and the man is a Republican.

The result is that even if the Blue Wave washes some female Republicans from office, they will be replaced with many more Democratic women. We have seen that in two different Blue Wave scenarios — one in which Toss-Ups break for Democrats, another in which the map expands for Democrats — women will still be expected to gain quite a few seats. The latter scenario is especially likely to yield large Democratic gains.