Abstract
The 2018 election produced the most diverse Congress in history. That major democratic achievement stands alongside troubling patterns that saw women and people of color occupy a diminishing presence among the ranks of Republican representatives. This chapter reviews important developments in congressional diversity, analyzes the factors that led to candidacy and success by female and nonwhite candidates, and discusses the implications of this momentous election for congressional lawmaking and future partisan contests.
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Mills, 248.
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Mills, 127; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 5.
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Some sources identify 110 women as serving in the 115th Congress, depending upon whether Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who died in office, is included. A male candidate won the special election to serve the rest of the term.
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These results extend Dolan’s 2010 research that finds that gender has declined as a barrier to elective office. Instead, voters evaluate Democratic candidates as more aligned with so-called women and family issues and Republican candidates as more aligned with masculinized policy issues like national security. This gives Republican men an advantage over both female and male Democrats in Republican-leaning districts and Democratic women an advantage over both female and male Republicans in Democratic-leaning districts. See Kathleen Dolan, When Does Gender Matter? Women Candidates and Gender Stereotypes in American Elections (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Hayes and Lawless, in research on the 2010 and 2014 House midterm elections, find that men and women now run similar campaigns and receive similar media coverage. They also find partisan differences in issue emphasis rather than by candidate gender. See Danny Hayes and Jennifer L. Lawless, Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
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Walter Clark Wilson, From Inclusion to Influence: Latino Representation in Congress and Latino Political Incorporation in America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017).
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Mark Z. Barabak, “Local Government was a Last Bastion for Struggling California Republicans. Not Anymore,” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-on-politics-column-20181217-story.html
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Wilson, W.C., Godwin, M.L. (2020). Toward a More Inclusive Union? Examining the Increased Diversity of Candidates and Members of Congress. In: Foreman, S., Godwin, M., Wilson, W. (eds) The Roads to Congress 2018. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19819-0_2
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