Might 2020 be another "year of the woman"? And a Davids and a Davis

In 2018, more women ran for office than ever before and the percentage of Congress that is female increased from 20 to 24 percent in the aftermath. Most of these were Democrats; in the House there are 88 women Democratic representatives and just 13 Republicans. Forty-eight of the 127 women serving in Congress (includes Senators) in 2020 are women of color: 22 are Black, 13 Latina, 8 Asian American/Pacific Islander,  2 Native American, 2 Middle Eastern/North African, and 1 multiracial.

Back in July, 538 took a look at why Democratic women seem be doing so much better than Republicans.

... Democratic women ... tend to be better positioned to run for office than Republican women, who are often more absent from traditional political pipelines, like state legislatures. Plus, historically speaking, there have simply been more organizations geared toward recruiting Democratic women and elite networks willing to finance Democratic women’s campaigns than there are groups that do the same for Republican women. Finally, it doesn’t hurt that the vast majority of Democratic voters agree that there are too few women in political office, whereas just 33 percent of Republicans think so. ...

But there are plenty of Republican women who feel left out by a progressive, feminist political vision.

“[M]any GOP women felt that those women in those movements do not speak for them,” said [Washington College political science professor Melissa] Deckman, citing both the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement as events that may have sparked more GOP women to run, telling me that some Republicans may be running to “put out a counternarrative of what women’s interests actually entail.”

Now that the primary season is nearly over, 538 has revisited the prospects of women aspirants for Congress in 2020. It looks as if we'll have more women Democrats in Congress next year -- and Republicans not so much so.

... based on data from primaries that were decided by Aug. 25, we found that more Republican women are getting nominated this year than in the last election cycle, while Democratic women are also improving on their impressive 2018 performance. As a result, the GOP won’t eclipse Democrats as the party of women anytime soon.

... The main reason Democratic women were more likely to win the nomination is that they were incredibly successful in primaries without an incumbent. Women made up 40 percent (224 out of 565) of all the candidates who ran in Democratic primaries with no incumbent, but a whopping 57 percent (126 out of 221) of candidates who advanced to the general election in those races.

... Now for the bad news for the GOP: A lot of those 77 female nominees might not win their general elections. Only six of them won primaries in seats that election handicapper Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates as “Safe Republican.” By contrast, 49 Republican women are running in “Safe Democratic” seats  ..

Sharice Davids is an incumbent Democrat from the 3rd District in Kansas. She's a former professional mixed martial artist, a lawyer, and an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

Wendy Davis is former Texas state senator who is challenging a Republican incumbent in TX-21, a strangely shaped district north of San Antonio which takes in some of Austin.