U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., left, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are among the record number of women running for governor this year. In this photo, they speak during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill on September 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — New data shows the number of women running in the 2026 election is up slightly compared to 2024, but experts say overall progress still needs to be made in women’s representation in public office.
The number of women running for governor has reached an all-time high this election cycle, and the number of candidates running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives could also reach a record, according to data released July 20 Data from the Center for American Women and Politics, or CAWP.
The center, part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, collects data on women’s representation in federal, state and local governments.
The center also conducts research and educational programs on the role of women in politics. Its mission is to strengthen women’s participation in public life.
Women in the midterm elections
This year, 85 female major-party candidates are running for governor in 36 states, a number that significantly exceeds the previous record of 69 set in 2022.
Fifty-one of those women are Democrats, another record, and 34 are Republicans.
At the congressional level, 580 women are currently running as major parties for the U.S. House of Representatives, a number just three shy of the record 583 candidates in 2018 and 2020.
According to CAWP, that record could be broken once Louisiana reaches the August 7 deadline for filing candidates for the House of Representatives.
The number of female Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives has already reached an all-time high of 387. The remaining 183 women running are Republicans.
In the Senate, 64 women from major parties are running for a seat, exactly half of them are Democrats and the other half are Republicans. The record for female Senate candidates was set at 70 in 2022.
To surpass that record of 70, a relatively huge number of women would have to emerge as Senate candidates in Maine and South Carolina, CAWP data director Chelsea Hill said during a media briefing with other CAWP research experts on Tuesday.
A day before the briefing, Republican Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina was present sworn On July 14, she announced that she would run for a full six-year term, succeeding her delayed brother Lindsey Graham, at the encouragement of President Donald Trump.
Despite not having a record number of female congressional candidates in either the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate, the overall number of women running for Congress increased compared to the last election cycle.
In 2024, the number of women seeking seats in Congress fell after previously rising in three consecutive cycles, a phenomenon that CAWP later described as “evidence of stagnating progress toward gender parity,” Hill said.
Although the number of women running for office has increased over the years, the proportion of women among all candidates running for Congress and state governors is still low.
Accordingly another sentence According to CAWP data as of July 20, women will make up 27% of all runs for the U.S. House of Representatives and 23.9% of all runs for the Senate in 2026. About 25% of gubernatorial candidates are women.
Milestones within reach
But at the same time, CAWP experts said at the media briefing that women could achieve many milestones in the 2026 election cycle, including firsts for women in certain government positions and for “women from certain racial and ethnic backgrounds and within both parties.”
They pointed to current Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a Republican, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democrat, both of whom are running to become the first women to serve as governors of their respective states.
And Deb Haaland, the former U.S. Interior secretary currently running in New Mexico, could become the first Native American governor of a state if she wins in November.
At the congressional level, names like Milat Keros, Aisha Wahab, Denise Powell and others have the potential to break barriers for women in public office.
Keros is poised to become the first Black woman to represent Colorado, Wahab the first woman from the Middle East or North Africa to run from California and Powell the first Democratic woman to represent Nebraska in Congress.
At the end of the media briefing, CAWP fellow and research director Kelly Dittmar said the center’s 2026 candidacy data could be used as a tool to examine and open a broader discussion about women’s political trajectories, giving a particular nod to Blackburn and Klobuchar’s gubernatorial races.
“As we think about women considering becoming heads of state as a potential path to the presidency, we need to keep that in mind as well,” she said.
CAWP’s data focuses on major party candidates and continues to be updated regularly to reflect upcoming state filing deadlines and congressional primary results.
