| | | | | |  | | By Elizabeth Ralph | | | | It looks like Joe Biden is going to be the next president—and Kamala Harris, the first female vice president—if the numbers hold. But one thing we know for sure: A record number of women will serve in the next House of Representatives. Particularly notable is the success of House Republican women , who are poised to add at least 13 seats to their ranks next year, bringing their total to as many as 33. (Some results have yet to come in, but the previous record for GOP women in the House was 25.) As Ally Mutnick and Mel Zanona write in POLITICO, these gains are coming after a very disappointing 2018 cycle, when just 13 Republican women won House seats — compared with 89 Democratic women. (The Democrats could end up with slightly fewer women in Congress this year.) The failure two years ago set off a massive GOP recruiting effort, led by people like Rep. Elise Stefanik and groups like Winning for Women — and it's paid off. "For all these naysayers," Stefanik told POLITICO, "we have proven that strong, Republican women are the best candidates to put on the ballot." As Mutnick and Zanona write, "Female GOP candidates won in some of the toughest races in the country and have been responsible for flipping six of seven Democratic seats thus far." "Women were able to run ahead of Trump in some of these swing districts," Mutnick told Anna Palmer on this week's Women Rule podcast. "If you have a district that's very suburban that has a lot of women who traditionally consider themselves Republican, [but] maybe don't like Trump's style," a female Republican candidate might be able to bring them back into the party. To be clear, not all the women who won were centrists or mainstream Republicans. One, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has embraced QAnon conspiracy theories and expressed racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views. What's next? Ariel Hill-Davis, a co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, one of several groups devoted to supporting female Republican candidates, notes that many of the organizations behind this surge exist outside the party structure, and hopes that the party will start to be more direct in its efforts to recruit women. "In many ways I think the GOP women who won this cycle won in spite of the party not because of it," she says. Hill-Davis believes the GOP also will have to become more open to candidates of non-traditional backgrounds who can embrace their identities as women. When women run, "their strengths are in part informed by their perspectives as women," she says. "It's not the only reason you should vote for them, but they come at things from a different perspective. And they're not really able to lean into that in the same way that their Democratic counterparts are, because there's such a visceral reaction against playing identity politics on the right." -- ON THIS TOPIC: Anna and Ally Mutnick dive into what happened to women on the ballot this year in the latest podcast. They talk about the recruiting effort behind the gains GOP women made in the House; what's up with some of the women still locked in tight races; and what this election means for gender diversity in the House long term. Listen here Happy Friday. It's been a wild week, but we're here to keep you sane. Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy for a great reads section this week. Subscribe here SOME NOTES ABOUT EXIT POLLING -- Exit polls are never totally reliable, and that's especially true this year, when so many ballots were cast early and by mail. In 2020, polling firms are adjusting their "exit poll" methods to include not only traditional polls of Election Day voters but also polls of early voters and phone polls of mail voters. But, as 538 cautions in an explainer , "exit polls will still be less reliable this year because the phone poll and the early exit poll are much tougher to get right than the traditional exit poll." As we've seen as the results come in, Election Day voters skew Republican, while mail-in voters skew Democrat. It's with all that in mind that you should read exit polls this year, including this information you're about to read. Remember these are preliminary results: -- NBC: "The gender gap is alive and well in the 2020 presidential race — but overall not quite as large as the two prior elections, thanks to a notable eight-point increase in men voters' support for [Joe] Biden, according to the data. "Biden is performing better nationally among both men and women than Hillary Clinton did four years ago. The increase is particularly large among men, who are breaking about evenly between Biden (48 percent) and President Donald Trump (49 percent). Female voters are supporting Biden (56 percent) by only about three points more than they did Hillary Clinton (54 percent)." -- CNN : According to CNN, Trump improved on his 2016 performance among white college educated women, but did worse with white women without a college degree. Overall, he gained ground among white women by 3 percentage points. Trump also gained ground among Black women since 2016 by 7 points, but Biden still won the group by an overwhelming 7 percentage points. -- ABC: "Nationally, Biden went 55% [to Trump's 44%] among female suburban voters, while Trump led by a smaller margin — 52%-46% — among suburban male voters, in preliminary results." HISTORIC FIRSTS -- "New Mexico makes history by becoming first state to elect all women of color to the House," via CBS News … "A record 574 LGBTQ candidates ran this year. Here are the big wins so far," via The Lily ... "Delaware Democrat Sarah McBride to become nation's first-ever transgender state senator," via CNN … "She got into politics after the Ferguson protests. She just became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress," via CNN THE NEXT CONGRESS -- "Pelosi formally seeks another 2 years as speaker," by John Bresnahan, Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris POLITICO -- "Dem leaders warn liberal rhetoric could blow Georgia races," by Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris: "Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a Blue Dog whose race remains uncalled though she declared victory this week, grew angry as she warned her party against some of the rhetoric she argued hurt moderate Democrats like herself, saying the election results were a 'failure.' "'No one should say "defund the police" ever again,' Spanberger said on the call, according to two sources. 'Nobody should be talking about socialism.' "Spanberger also warned that if Democrats kept up their tactics in 2022: 'We will get f------ torn apart.'" POLITICO -- Remember the blue wave in 2018 didn't just bring into office progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it also boosted many centrist women, from Abigail Spanberger to Mikie Sherrill to Elissa Slotkin. Now these centrists are nervous. MARK YOUR CALENDARS -- Join me on Nov. 12 for a post-election roundtable discussion diving into how women candidates fared at all levels this year. We'll be joined by Shaniqua McClendon, political director of Crooked Media, and Micah Yousefi, political and policy director of Winning for Women, as well as one or two other guests. Register for the event here | 
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks to media alongside Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL), chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on November 3, 2020, in Washington, DC. Democrats did not lose their majority in the House of Representatives, but they did lose several races they had expected to win, setting off an internal clash between the progressive and moderate wings of the party caucus. | J. Scott Applewhite - Pool/Getty Images | | | | ON THE BALLOT -- "Initiatives to restrict abortion access fail in Colorado, but pass in Louisiana," by Shefali Luthra: "Abortion rights faced a mixed election night: Voters in Colorado rejected a state ballot initiative to ban the procedure after 22 weeks of pregnancy, according to Associated Press projections. But Louisiana voters approved a state constitutional amendment to specify that abortion is not a protected right, per both the AP and Decision Desk HQ. In Colorado, about 59.3 percent of people voted against Proposition 115, with 82 percent of the vote counted. Louisiana voters passed Amendment 1 with about 64.6 percent of people voting in favor, with 92 percent of votes counted. "The divergent results foreshadow an emerging reality for abortion access. Following the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court is expected to chip away at abortion access protections — Barrett has suggested Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the federal right to an abortion, was wrongly decided, likely cementing enough votes to reverse the landmark decision. … If the court strikes down Roe v. Wade, or scales back its protections, states will take a deciding role in what abortion rights look like across the country. That means stark divisions in access playing out across the country. There will be some states like Colorado, with stronger protections in place, and others like Louisiana, with heightened restrictions. "'The states in the South and the Midwest will continue to adopt abortion restrictions and work to make it even harder to access services, while states that are on the West Coast and in the Northeast will look to not only protect abortion legally but ensure that access is available and affordable,' Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state reproductive policies for the Guttmacher Institute, previously told The 19th." The 19th FROM THE ARCHIVES -- "Stacey Abrams's Fight for a Fair Vote," by Jelani Cobb: If Georgia swings for Biden, Stacey Abrams will be a big part of the reason why. This story from August 2019 dives into her GOTV efforts in Georgia. "Although she has only recently come to wide attention, Abrams, a forty-five-year-old tax attorney, romance novelist, and former state representative, has been working on electoral reform—particularly on voter registration—in Georgia for some fifteen years. In that regard, some Georgians view her [gubernatorial] campaign as a success; she won more votes than any Democrat has ever won for statewide office. ... "Democratic leaders from red states in the South and beyond with shifting populations — they include the Presidential candidates Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Indiana, and former Representative Beto O'Rourke, of El Paso, Texas, as well as the former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who is considering a second run for the U.S. Senate, in Mississippi — have examined Abrams's campaign to see how they might adopt its strategies. Espy described his discussion with her as 'a graduate course in politics.' "Abrams has yet to decide if she will run for office again. For now, she is focussed on addressing the irregularities that her campaign identified. Within days of the election, she formed an organization called Fair Fight Action, which, with Care in Action, a domestic-worker advocacy group, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Kemp had impaired citizens' ability to vote, and thereby deprived them of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. (Abrams is the group's chair; her former campaign director, Lauren Groh-Wargo, is the C.E.O.) The suit seeks changes to the entire structure of Georgia's electoral system, from the number of polling stations and the kind of voting machines used to policies on registration. In May, a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia ruled that the case may proceed." The New Yorker NEW PODCAST -- "How Women Who've Lost Work Are Coping," via Harvard Business Review: "The pandemic has taken jobs, gigs, customers, and contracts from countless women. And many still aren't sure when their industries will reopen or when clients will be ready to hire them again. Three women — a massage therapist, an opera singer, and a small business owner — who lost work in March open up about how they've been coping with the changes to their employment and finding a way forward." Listen here. AROUND THE WORLD -- "New Zealand Appoints First Indigenous Female Foreign Minister," by Dustin Jones: "New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced parliament's newest ministers Monday, including the appointment of Nanaia Mahuta to the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs; the nation's first Indigenous woman to hold the position. Just shy of a quarter-century of political prowess, including her most recent roles as Minister for Māori Development and Local Government, Mahuta will join what is becoming one of the most diverse parliaments in the world. 'I am excited by this team,' Ardern said. 'They bring experience from the ground, and from within politics. But they also represent renewal and reflect the New Zealand we live in today.'" NPR -- "The women who risk their lives to deliver Pakistan's polio vaccines," via The Guardian ... "Poland Delays a Near-Total Ban on Abortion," via NYT HISTORY DEPT. -- "Prehistoric hunters weren't all male. Women killed big game, new discovery suggests," by Katie Hunt: "Men hunted. Women gathered. That has long been the prevailing view of our prehistoric ancestors. But the discovery of a woman buried 9,000 years ago in the Andes Mountains with weapons and hunting tools, and an analysis of other burial sites in the Americas challenges this widely accepted division of labor in hunter-gatherer society. The woman, thought to be between 17 and 19 years old when she died, was buried with items that suggested she hunted big-game animals by spear throwing — stone projectile points for felling large animals, a knife and flakes of rock for removing internal organs, and tools for scraping and tanning hides. "'Labor practices among recent hunter-gatherer societies are highly gendered, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow "natural,"' said lead study author Randy Haas, an assistant professor of anthropology at University of California, Davis, in a news release. 'But it's now clear that sexual division of labor was fundamentally different — likely more equitable — in our species' deep hunter-gatherer past.' ... "To examine whether this woman found at this site was an outlier, the researchers examined 429 skeletons at 107 burials sites in North and South America from the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods — around 8,000 to 14,000 years ago. Of those, 27 individuals were buried with hunting tools — 11 were female and 15 were male. The sample was sufficient to 'warrant the conclusion that female participation in early big-game hunting was likely nontrivial,' the study, which published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday, said." CNN -- "A Woman Warned GM about Warming, But Men Didn't Listen," via E&E News IN CULTURE -- "Her Grandmother Taught Her How to Steal. Now What?" via NYT … "Ariana Grande Talks Dirty on 'Positions,'" via The New Yorker ... "Review: Black women refusing to be silenced. That's the sound of this 'November,'" via Los Angeles Times VIDEO -- Breaking down the election: Is polling over?
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| | | | WISDOM OF THE WEEK -- Nicole Lynn Lewis, CEO, Generation Hope: "Never doubt whether you belong in a room or around a table. When I started college with a 3-month old baby in tow, I felt completely out of place, but I learned from that experience that we can't wait for someone to make space for us or to make us feel 100 percent comfortable. Our skills, background and experiences are assets to any room we enter. Hold tight to that even in the most intimidating situations and remember that people are relying on your voice." Connect with Nicole here. | | | | JOIN THURSDAY: A WOMEN RULE ROUNDTABLE : 2020 proved to be a history-making year for women in politics. We saw the first Black woman on a vice presidential ticket, a record number of Republican women running for Congress, and women of color running for public office at an all-time high. Join POLITICO's Elizabeth Ralph, Crooked Media's Shaniqua McClendon, and Winning for Women's Micah Yousefi for a deep dive into the results for women candidates in the 2020 election cycle and what progress we still need to see for women in politics. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | IMPACT PARTNER CONTENT -- Susannah Wellford, Running Start's CEO & Founder, discusses the important work that will carry us through the election cycle of November 2020 and into the future: getting more women ready for political leadership. Read more here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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