Among record number of female candidates, three times as many are Democrats as GOP

The number of women running for elected office in 2018 is reaching record highs, but the women running as Democrats far exceeds women running as Republicans, CNN reported.

Of the 440 women candidates running in House races, 332 are Democrats and 108 are Republican, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University found. In the Senate, 32 Democratic women and 22 Republican women are running for Senate seats.

CNN reported that currently, women make up nearly 33 percent of Democratic senators and representatives but only 9.7 percent of Republican lawmakers.

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She Should Run, a nonpartisan group working to get more women to run for office, had about 100 women joining its network per month during the 2016 election. In the past 17 months, the group has seen a tenfold increase in women joining, with almost 17,000 women joining in total.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who announced she is not running for reelection in 2018, told CNN that Republican women are not inspired to run for office and partly blames President Trump.

“Just stop with the name calling,” she told CNN. “It turns women off. It turns a lot of people off, but especially young women. They just say this is ugly.”

She noted that while Republican women are repelled by Trump, the president has energized Democratic women.

“It’s inspiring Democratic women to run,” she added. “Unfortunately, it’s not inspiring Republican women to run. The rhetoric of the White House is a recruiting tool for liberal women to counter that.”