WASHINGTON — New data reveals the number of women running in the 2026 elections is slightly up from 2024, but experts say there is still progress to be made with women’s representation in public office overall.
The number of women running for governor has reached an all-time high this election cycle, and the number seeking a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives could also set a record, according to 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 government.
The center also conducts research and runs educational programs on the role of women in politics. Its mission is to increase female involvement in public life.
Women in the midterms
There are 85 women major-party candidates running for governor across 36 states this year, 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.
On the congressional level, 580 women are currently major-party contenders for the U.S. House, a figure that is just three away from the 2018 and 2020 record of 583 women candidates.
That record could be broken once Louisiana reaches its candidate filing deadline for the House on Aug. 7, according to CAWP.
The number of Democratic House candidates who are women has already reached an all-time high at 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 Democrats and half of them Republicans. The record for women Senate candidates was set in 2022 at 70.
Fairly high numbers of women would need to emerge as Senate candidates in Maine and South Carolina to beat that record of 70, said CAWP Director of Data Chelsea Hill during a media briefing with other CAWP research experts on Tuesday.
A day before the briefing, Republican Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was sworn in July 14 to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham, announced plans to run for a full six-year term following the encouragement of President Donald Trump.
Although record numbers of congressional women candidates have not yet been reached in either the U.S. House or Senate, the overall number of women running for Congress is up compared to the last election cycle.
In 2024, the number of women who sought seats in Congress dropped after having previously increased for three consecutive cycles, a phenomenon that CAWP later described as “evidence of stalled progress toward gender parity,” Hill said.
Despite the increase in women seeking office over the years, female representation is still low when taken as a percentage of all candidates running for Congress and state governors.
According to another set of CAWP data from July 20, women make up 27% of total candidacies for the U.S. House and 23.9% of the total for the Senate in 2026. About 25% of gubernationarial candidates are women.
Milestones within reach
But at the same time, CAWP experts said at the media briefing, there are many milestones women could achieve in the 2026 election cycle, including firsts for women in certain government positions and for “women of specific racial and ethnic backgrounds and within either party.”
They pointed to current Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a Republican, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democrat, who are both running to become the first women to serve as governors of their respective states.
And Deb Haaland, the former U.S. secretary of the Interior currently running in New Mexico, could become the first-ever Native American woman governor in any state if she wins in November.
At the congressional level, names such as Milat Keros, Aisha Wahab, Denise Powell and more have the potential to break barriers for women in public office.
Keros is in place to become the first Black woman to represent Colorado, Wahab the first Middle Eastern or North African woman to serve from California and Powell the first Democratic woman to represent Nebraska in Congress.
At the end of the media briefing, CAWP Scholar and Director of Research Kelly Dittmar said the center’s 2026 candidacy data could be used as a tool to study and open up a broader discussion about women’s political pathways, nodding particularly to Blackburn and Klobuchar’s gubernatorial runs.
“When we think about women moving to be chief executives of a state as a potential pathway to the presidency, (it’s) also something we need to always keep our eye on,” she said.
CAWP’s data focuses on major party candidates and will continue to be updated regularly to account for upcoming state filing deadlines and congressional primary results.
