More women are running for office this year than during the record-breaking 2018 midterms

Kentucky Democratic House Candidate Amy McGrath during a run in 2018.

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 22 May 2020

We might have declared "the Year of the Women" a little prematurely. While the 2018 midterm elections saw a historic number of women run for Congress, 2020 has already broken that record, Andrea González-Ramírez reports for Gen.

In 2018, 529 women filed to run for the House or the Senate, according to Vox, with 117 ultimately elected or appointed. This year, some 538 female congressional candidates have already filed their paperwork.

Among them are 490 women vying for House seats, according to data from Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), up from 476 in 2018. "And with candidate filing deadlines still weeks away in 14 states," Gen writes, "we can expect even more women to step forward." So far, 48 women have filed to run for Senate in 2020, just behind 2018's record of 53.

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Additionally, Gen notes that 195 of the women running for the House this year are on the Republican ticket, "far more than the previous high of 133 in the 2010 midterms." You can read more about the nine women to watch this cycle over at Gen.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.