Since the first few tears fell on the floor of the Javits Center two years ago, it’s been building. With the Women’s March, #MeToo, and the Kavanaugh wars, it grew: An expectation that a “Pink Wave”—a surge of Democratic women inspired by opposition to Donald Trump—would wash over the country on Tuesday night.
The wave wasn’t as big as some people had wishcasted, but it wasn’t nothing, either. Nearly every female candidate in a competitive Congressional race won, most of them replacing Republicans, and the total number of women in the House will rise from 84 to 95, a pretty fair percentage increase.
Of the 34(-ish) House seats Democrats netted, most of the winning candidates were women. 98 Democratic women challenged incumbents this year, compared to just 22 Republican women. Women running for open seats were disproportionately Democrats, too: 33 Democratic women ran for open House seats, compared to 13 Republicans.
More non-incumbent women won their House races than ever before, and most of them were Democrats. Among them Jennifer Wexton, who branded her incumbent rival Barbara “Trumpstock,” was one of the first wins of the night. But the Northern Virginia district Wexton won is #Resistance land. In a district Northwest of Chicago, Obama alumna Lauren Underwood unseated Tea Party Republican Randy Hultgren. And Abigail Spanberger beat proto-Trump Dave Brat in Virginia-7. But the ripples didn’t reach as deep into Trump Country as Democrats had hoped: In Kentucky, Marine Amy McGrath couldn’t unseat Republican Andy Barr. And the gender wave was decidedly blue: In upstate New York, the “Tea Party favorite,” Rep. Claudia Tenney, fell to a Democratic opponent, a man. In Utah, Republican incumbent Mia Love—whose election was part of the reformicon era where the party tried to appeal beyond it’s old white, male, and aging base—lost to Democrat Ben McAdams.
A pink wave that’s really just part of a blue wave is actually a bit dispiriting. It suggests that the woman power was less a function of gender than partisanship. And it sets the table for the cycle to become more vicious than virtuous for Republican women. Their representation in Congress took a dive Tuesday, despite picking up a seat (or two) in the Senate.
Then again, it shouldn’t be all that surprising. The dominance of Democratic women is due in large part to them holding a disproportionate share of the likely candidate pool: Under Trump, highly educated and politically engaged women have turned Democratic, hard. Even those who’ve stuck it out as Republicans “strongly approve” of the president at less than half the rate of their male counterparts.
Trump has a women problem—he always has. And now the Republican party has one, too.
