Democrats made significant inroads in state legislative races in recent election cycles and hoped to build on those gains on Tuesday. But with many state legislative races still too close to call — and likely to trigger recounts — Republicans appear to have largely staved off big challenges in key states and flipped Democratic seats in others.

Most notably, they partially reversed big Democratic 2022 gains in Michigan and Minnesota that gave that party total control of those state governments and ushered through bold progressive agendas. The GOP flipped at least one legislative chamber in Michigan and appeared to have battled Democrats to a draw in the Minnesota House, with control of the chamber still up in the air.

And Democratic dreams of big gains in Wisconsin — under redrawn maps that gave them their best shot in more than a decade — largely didn’t materialize.

About 80 percent of the country’s 7,386 state legislative seats and 11 governorships were on the ballot Tuesday. Republicans have dominated state capitals for more than a decade, since eviscerating Democrats in the 2010 cycle. And if the early returns are any indication, they’ll do so for the foreseeable future.

“Democrats hyped up the cycle as their best shot since 2010 when they got blown out in the states to gain some real power, and they largely fell short,” said POLITICO’s Liz Crampton, who reported on many of the most closely watched state-level contests in recent months.

We assembled a team of POLITICO reporters and editors — Crampton, Madison Fernandez, Zach Montellaro and Lisa Kashinsky — who have been tracking state races throughout the 2024 cycle to break down the most compelling and surprising results from Tuesday.

Two of the battleground state legislatures were in a holding pattern as of Wednesday afternoon. Arizona appeared to be Democrats’ best shot at earning a complete flip — but it will come down to a handful of races that will likely take days for results to be finalized. In Pennsylvania, Republicans appear to have maintained control in the Senate, while Democrats are hoping to cling to a one-seat majority in the House.

Eight of the 11 governorships on the ballot this year were open seats, raising the prospect of pitched battles. But in the end, not a single state executive post flipped parties. Even the most competitive race in the country — New Hampshire — ended up being a runaway victory for Republican Kelly Ayotte.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Liz, you wrote about a bunch of state legislative contests this cycle. What’s your big takeaway from what we saw on Tuesday?

Liz Crampton: Bottom line — it was a great night for Republicans and a mediocre night for Democrats. Democrats hyped up the cycle as their best shot since 2010, when they got blown out in the states, to gain some real power — and they largely fell short.

Madison, Zach, what would you add to that?

Madison Fernandez: I’m interested to see and hear from folks what the reasoning for that is. In the lead up to the election, Dems were stressing that ballot roll-off is a big thing for them, where voters don’t vote all the way down ballot in these races. So it could be that. But also, when you look at the national Democratic enthusiasm on Tuesday, it wasn’t great really anywhere up or down the ballot. So I think there’s a few factors at play here.

Zach Montellaro: It was also a pretty mixed-to-bad bag for generally liberal-coded ballot measures. Some abortion right measures won — more won than lost — but they lost in Florida, most notably, the biggest state to reject an abortion rights ballot measure.

Voting reform — most parties don’t embrace it, but generally liberals are happier to vote for ranked choice voting than Republicans. Ranked-choice voting pretty uniformly lost across the country.

Banning non-citizen voting — which to be clear is already illegal in federal elections — passed by big margins basically across the country.

Ballot measures on the whole were better for liberals than the results were for Democrats, but they still suffered some pretty big defeats.

What were the biggest surprises or the most intriguing results?

ZM: The easy one is North Carolina for me. Harris lost the state, but Democrats won basically every other big statewide race. They won the next governor. They won the next lieutenant governor. They won the race for attorney general.

They broke the supermajority in the state House — very, very, very narrowly — but that’s a big deal, because now incoming governor Josh Stein actually has some authority in a way that Roy Cooper didn’t under a supermajority.

If you’re only looking at the federal election, bad night for Democrats in North Carolina. Underneath that, though, not a bad night for North Carolina Democrats.

What do you attribute that disconnect between how Harris fared in North Carolina and how the rest of the Democratic ticket fared?

MF: Some Democrats will say that it has to do with Mark Robinson and his scandalous candidacy for governor. In the race for attorney general, Democrats really tied Dan Bishop, the Republican candidate, to [Robinson], which was something that Bishop tried to push back on, but he was just hit with ad after ad.

But ticket splitters are alive and well in North Carolina, and I think that has a lot to do with it, too.

LC: To that point on ticket splitting, I want to see more information on Pennsylvania, because I was watching a couple of races in Bucks County that Democrats had identified as potential flip opportunities. And in several of those races, they fell short. In particular, there was one race where it was a repeat matchup of two candidates in suburban Bucks. And last cycle, the Democrat lost to the Republican incumbent by 700-ish votes. And this time around, she lost by a much, much wider margin. So in some cases, we saw fewer ticket splitters in Pennsylvania.

MF: Also in North Carolina, there’s a lot of conversation about what the role of state parties is in politics nowadays. But the North Carolina Democratic state party is one that really had a lot of life injected into it after Anderson Clayton, the party chair, stepped into the role.

We’re less than 24 hours after polls closed. A lot of races are still too close to call, and many will ultimately trigger recounts. What are we still looking out for in terms of results right now?

LC: Arizona is Democrats’ best shot at changing the narrative around this election. There’s still a possibility that they flip either chamber, and it’s going to come down to a handful of races with very tight margins that we probably won’t know the results of for several days.

Keep an eye on the Tucson suburbs. The Democratic candidates in both the state House and Senate there are leading — not by a comfortable margin, but they’re ahead — and that’s a good sign for the party statewide.

Do you see any separation between the national contests and state-level races in terms of the issue set that really drove the outcome of these races?

ZM: No. Ticket splitting isn’t totally dead, right? Ask Kelly Ayotte, who just won in New Hampshire, and ask Josh Stein. But the only place people still ticket split, really, this day and age, is governors’ races. State legislative races — more and more and more — are just being tied to your presidential vote.

If you can’t build your own brand as a politician — and increasingly, the only people who can do that are not senators, are not House members, are not state legislators, are governors — the issue sets run about the same.

The other exception that we haven’t mentioned is Phil Scott, the most popular politician in America. In a state that elects Bernie Sanders, they also elect a Republican governor by Saddam Hussein margins.

LC: One footnote on Vermont: Republicans broke the Democratic supermajority there. That completely changes the dynamic between Scott and Democrats in the Legislature. So the fate of supermajorities is an interesting subplot of this election.

Let’s get Lisa into the mix. The New Hampshire governor’s race was the most closely watched, tightly contested in the country. Ultimately, Kelly Ayotte won by about nine points. Why did she pull away?

Lisa Kashinsky: There were a few factors. First of all, Kelly Ayotte has been a household name in New Hampshire for about two decades now, first as the state’s attorney general, then as a senator. She only narrowly lost reelection to the Senate in 2016. And she had the backing of the state’s really highly popular governor, [Chris Sununu], though apparently not as popular as Phil Scott.

[Sununu] campaigned extensively for her. He was in ads. He was on the trail. He’s really well-liked in New Hampshire, which despite being blue federally is still very purple, and obviously after these elections red at the state level. And Ayotte really ran as an extension of his administration and his policies.

Democrats really used their national abortion-rights playbook in this race. And it wasn’t enough to combat all of these advantages that Ayotte had. She was able to parry all of their attacks on her past stances … by saying — effectively, it seems — that she would uphold New Hampshire’s current law, allowing pregnancies to 24 weeks with some exceptions afterwards. After a year of running ads about that to combat Democrats’ attacks, it looks like people believed it.

And New Hampshire, like everywhere else, is worried about the economy. That was the top issue in polls for voters. When you’re running as an extension of Sununu — Live Free or Die, no taxes, don’t Mass. up New Hampshire with the high taxes and all that stuff — that’s a really salient message to voters there.

There were a couple other governor’s races that were on the radar screen. Former Congressman Dave Reichert, running in Washington, had Republicans very excited. Democrats were hopeful that they might spring an upset in Indiana with a former state superintendent of education and former Republican. But both those races ended up being blowouts. Any thoughts on why those really didn’t end up being competitive races?

ZM: If you told me at the beginning of the cycle that there’d be zero flips, I’d be like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” How we got there certainly was surprising — like the margin of Kelly Ayotte’s victory, Mark Robinson’s implosion in North Carolina.

But at the end of the day, Washington is not a bluish state, and Indiana is not a reddish state. Washington is a blue state, and Indiana is a red state. And people came home.

You can only defy gravity for so long in politics. And Dave Reichert is probably the best example of that, too. He bowed out from Congress during the Trump era because he didn’t think he’d survive, and then ultimately couldn’t really escape the Trump orbit. He was kind of doomed from the start.

What other subplots are you guys watching? What else struck you coming out of these state leg and gubernatorial contests?

MF: On abortion, I wonder how Democrats are going to approach it, if they’re going to keep relying on it so heavily, if they’re going to tweak their message at all. You’ve seen that abortion is really successful, typically in statewide races. Look at Andy Beshear in Kentucky in ’23. That’s what helped him get to reelection. It obviously didn’t work in New Hampshire.

I can imagine Dems saying, “Oh, that’s just a one-off.” But I think it really is sort of a blemish on the record, for lack of a better term. It’s also interesting when you look at some of the abortion rights ballot initiatives that went down. Those were the first losses since Roe was overturned for these initiatives.

When you look at issue polls, abortion’s still up there. But it’s definitely not number one. It’s the economy. It’s democracy. So I’m interested to see how the party is going to be approaching abortion messaging in the coming year.

LK: It feels like they might need to actually have a reckoning with it, not just in the states. They lost a federal election where their candidate, Kamala Harris, was running on protecting women’s rights against Donald Trump, noted misogynist, and person who helped fell Roe v. Wade. I’m curious to see if that actually sinks in, like down the ballot, in these state-level races, and if Democrats choose to confront or grapple with this really at any level.

ZM: Early test for that? Give Abigail Spanberger a call. There’s no off years in politics, folks. And we have two governor’s races next year, two competitive ones maybe, in Virginia and New Jersey.

Abigail Spanberger probably doesn’t feel great right now, because Democrats just lost the White House. But if she’s solely thinking about her chances of being the next governor of Virginia, she probably feels a little bit better, because Virginia — blue-ish-leaning state — it’s always the biggest referendum. Glenn Youngkin very famously won in 2021, kind of beating back Biden’s advance.

If you ask me right now who the next governor of Virginia is going to be, I bet more often than not it’s going to be a Democrat. How does Abigail Spanberger talk about abortion is going to be a huge hint to if this has any sort of staying power in 2025, 2026, or if Democrats need to figure out something else to talk about?

How do you see the results that we saw in state races fit into sort of the national narrative that’s developed over the last 24 hours with Trump winning by a much bigger margin than most folks anticipated, Republicans flipping the Senate and still up in the air about whether they ultimately end up in control of the House?

LC: State-level Democrats are going to have to confront the same question that the Harris campaign is: Does ground game truly matter? Because this was their strongest ground game in many states across the country, and they still lost. So traditional politicking seems to be no more.

MF: Both Dems and Republicans, the [state legislative] national committees were telling me in the lead up to the election that they’re still not getting enough attention, still not getting enough resources. Part of that is because we were in a really high stakes, high dollar presidential year. But I am interested to see how the attention on state legislatures is going to progress in the coming years, especially in the off years when that’s one of the bigger races on the ballot.

It’s evident that Dems still have some work to do, even though there is some more national investment than there has been historically. After last night, sure, they are celebrating some gains. But I don’t think it’s where they want it to be.

The fight for the House majority is still too close to call.

While Donald Trump has won the presidency, it may be days or weeks until he knows if he’ll have powerful allies atop the House, due in part to close races in states that take longer to count ballots like California and Arizona. For months, neither party has held a significant edge, and both sides predicted modest gains if they get control of the House.

Results were still too close to call in a slew of battleground House races early Wednesday morning. The Associated Press projected that two Republican incumbents in New York would lose reelection: Reps. Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams.

Both of them represent districts won by President Joe Biden in 2020. Democrats had invested heavily to try to wrest back control of the blue-state seats and saw them as a key path back to the House majority. In other battlegrounds, Republican Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.) and Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.) were locked in close races, as were Democratic Reps. Susan Wild (Pa.) and Matt Cartwright (Pa.).

Other incumbents in competitive races held on. For Republicans, that included Reps. Zach Nunn in Iowa, Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey, Nick LaLota in New York and Monica De La Cruz in Texas. Democratic incumbents, like Reps. Pat Ryan in New York and Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico, also prevailed.

With the Senate in Republican hands, Trump could get the sought-after trifecta if House Republicans win — paving the way for Republican legislative priorities on tax cuts and more. But if Democrats manage to flip the chamber, a split Congress could mean Trump faces the same partisan fights over spending and the debt ceiling that have plagued lawmakers over the past two years.

Speaker Mike Johnson, in a statement early Wednesday morning, vowed that “House Republicans stand ready and prepared to immediately act on Trump’s America First agenda to improve the lives of every family, regardless of race, religion, color, or creed, and make America great again” if the GOP keeps the majority. Johnson appeared with Trump as he spoke to supporters early Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida.

With the hopes of expanding their majority, Republicans were far more intentional with their candidate recruitment and which challengers they backed in the primaries than they were in 2022. House Republicans’ campaign arm worked closely with Trump, coordinating to boost candidates the party saw as the most likely to win the general election.

Meanwhile, Democrats, who held a commanding lead on fundraising and hammered on the message of abortion rights, relied in part on a slate of repeat challengers who narrowly lost in 2022. The bet was that they would benefit from existing campaign infrastructure and name ID among voters. It’s to be seen if that strategy pays off, as many of those matchups have yet to be called.

Both sides had hoped that redistricting would provide their side with a significant advantage, but several new maps in a handful of states ultimately didn’t heavily tilt in Democrats’ or Republicans’ favor overall. The creation of new districts in the South to provide more voting power to Black voters was largely offset by an aggressive GOP gerrymander in North Carolina, and a not-so-aggressive Democratic redraw in New York.

LOS ANGELES — Adam Schiff, who rose to prominence as the Democrats’ leading anti-Trump voice in the House, easily clinched a promotion to the Senate on Tuesday.

But his victory speech in downtown Los Angeles was more somber than exultant as he turned to the national political dynamic, with Republicans poised to take control of the Senate and Donald Trump projected to win key battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina.

“Tonight is going to be a hard, long night. We won’t know the result of every race. We will need to be patient,” he said. “And whatever the result of the presidential race, we know there will be serious challenges facing the state of California and the country, regardless of the outcome, regardless of the way people may have voted.”

Schiff easily defeated his Republican opponent, former baseball star Steve Garvey — a victory that was so anticipated that the Burbank Democrat spent much of the general election campaigning and raising money for out-of-state Senate Democrats in an effort to cozy up to his future colleagues.

In his speech, Schiff acknowledged Garvey, his opponent, and said that he joined the baseball icon in celebrating the Dodgers’ World Series victory.

He did not mention Trump, his bitter adversary, by name, but he implicitly invoked the Republican presidential candidate by vowing to guard the country’s democratic institutions.

Schiff said that, as senator, he is “committed to taking on the big fights to protect our freedoms and protect our democracy.”

“California will continue to be at the forefront of progress, the fulcrum of democracy, the champion of innovation and the protector of our rights and freedoms,” he said.

He also echoed other California Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who have acknowledged the state’s housing affordability crisis. “We are going to build more affordable housing so that you aren’t forced to choose between your rent and putting food on the table,” he said. “We are going to ensure that our fellow neighbors do not have to sleep on the street.”

Blake Jones contributed to this story.

NEW YORK — Attorney Josh Riley clinched a crucial win for House Democrats on Tuesday night, unseating freshman Rep. Marc Molinaro in a nasty upstate New York showdown.

The upset came after Molinaro defeated Riley in 2022 by fewer than 2 points, a Republican triumph that helped them win the House majority. Democrats seeking redemption this cycle identified Molinaro as one of five vulnerable Republicans and targeted him with big spending and intensive voter outreach.

The slugfest of a race played out in a district where border security was a central issue.

Molinaro spent much of his reelection campaign hewing closely to the anti-migrant platform of former President Donald Trump, even though he’s one of the most moderate Republicans in Congress. He railed against Riley for his legal work supporting DACA and fighting Trump’s Muslim ban, alleging that it laid the groundwork for a porous southern border. Molinaro also spread the rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio ate pets and sought to link Riley to the euthanasia of a social media-famous squirrel, P’Nut.

But Molinaro’s embrace of Trump may have proven too much for swing voters in his district.

In the end, Riley prevailed with the consistent promise that he would work across the aisle to secure the border and stand up to members of his party who stood in the way.

He tarred Molinaro as a Trump sycophant who would green-light hard-right policies, including a nationwide ban on abortion. Molinaro and other battleground New York Republicans, however, pushed back on the abortion attack line as lies, with Molinaro even launching a TV ad clarifying his support of reproductive rights. The outgoing House member had said he does not support a federal ban and stressed he was the first Republican to sign on to a Democratic bill expanding access to IVF.

The district — which encompasses a sprawling swath a couple of hours north of New York City and south of Albany — was one of the most coveted in the country. Democrats and Republicans poured precious resources into the toss-up race, both understanding that the path to the House majority runs through New York.

Molinaro embarked on a “Hometown Priorities” tour of the district in the final stretch of the race and hit Riley with everything he had. He tied the Democrat closely to unpopular President Joe Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“This president used the prosecutorial discretion argument that you made to catch-and-release, and then they come to New York where there’s a sanctuary state because of your allies, Kathy Hochul and others,” Molinaro charged of Riley at their sole debate this cycle, a contentious night that frequently left the Democratic challenger looking at the Republican in disbelief.

Riley, like other swing-district Democrats, tried to stress that Molinaro was part of a historically gridlocked Congress run by Republicans.

“He cares more about having a problem to campaign on than solving the problem,” Riley said of Molinaro at the debate, adding of border security: “The only thing he’s offered to the voters over the last two months on this issue: not solutions, not a plan, not a vision.”

Their race was a vicious one, with Riley attacking Molinaro as a “career politician” and Molinaro calling Riley a “D.C. insider.”

Andy Kim celebrates New Jersey Senate race win

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Republicans have wrested back control of the Senate after four years in the minority, positioning the GOP to play a massive role on nominations and in looming policy battles regardless of whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump emerges victorious in the presidential race.

It’s a massive, if largely expected, win for the GOP, which invested heavily in candidate recruitment this cycle. Armed with a highly favorable map, national Republicans worked competitive primaries in battleground states, hoping to maximize their offensive strength in the general election. It worked.

Republicans flipped West Virginia early in the night and added Ohio to their column around 11:30 p.m. Republican Tim Sheehy has led in most recent polling in Montana, though it is too early for an official call there.

They have other possible pick-up opportunities in states like Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania. But Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) both won reelection, closing off a path for Democrats to offset their losses by flipping a GOP-held seat.

The party will take control just as longtime GOP leader Mitch McConnell steps down from his role atop the conference, and it’s still unclear who will take his place. Elections for Senate GOP leadership are slated to occur next week, with two longtime McConnell allies, Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), and conservative Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) running for what will become majority leader next term. Others could still jump into the election.

There is not yet a call in the presidential race, but if Harris wins, the chamber would become an instant logjam for her administration. Republicans have signaled they’ll even make Cabinet confirmations a fight, meaning any major policy initiatives from the current vice president would be an incredibly tough sell.

But a Republican-led Senate would be a boon to a Trump presidency, with the ability to confirm nominees and control legislation on the floor. The size of the majority will matter, since there are still several Republicans in the Senate that regularly broke with Trump during his presidential term, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. They’re likely to become outsized voices in this newfound Senate majority, especially if Trump is in the White House. However, if Republicans win more seats, those moderate voices will lose power on nominees and other items subject to a simple-majority threshold for passage.

Republican candidates in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan are leading as of early Wednesday and party operatives believe that their fates will largely depend on Trump’s performance. Democratic candidates in those states are largely not outrunning Harris. Wins in those three states could grow a GOP majority to 55 seats since Republicans are favored to win in Montana. In Arizona, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego maintains a comfortable lead and no results are available in Nevada, which is notorious for counting ballots slowly.

Due to the 60-vote threshold for most legislation, the GOP will still have to work with Democrats on certain priorities. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to stay on as the top Democrat in the chamber after four years leading the Senate; he had insisted until the end that his party would defy the odds, as it did in 2022 when Democrats gained a Senate seat.

The party knew this cycle was going to be tougher. They had two incumbent Democrats running in red states — Ohio and Montana — and Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) opted for retirement, effectively handing Republicans that seat. The best pickup opportunities were in red states: Texas and Florida.

Still, the chamber — barring an all-out implosion of the filibuster — will require bipartisan collaboration to get most legislation through. That includes must-pass legislation that will come up next year, like government funding and raising the debt limit. Republicans have also insisted they want to tackle legislation addressing core conservative issues, a mission that would be aided by a Republican presidency and House, neither of which have been called yet. “As a new Republican Senate majority, our focus will be to take on an agenda that reflects America’s priorities — lower prices, less spending, secure borders, and American energy dominance,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), current GOP conference chair, said in a statement late Tuesday night.

With this cycle sealed, Democrats are expected to immediately go on the campaign offensive. The party has been salivating over potential pick-up opportunities in North Carolina and Texas in 2026, and has only a handful of competitive seats to defend, namely Georgia and Michigan.

NEW YORK — Democrat John Mannion flipped a central New York House seat Tuesday, clinching a must-win district for his party to recapture control of the chamber.

A state senator who represents the Syracuse area, Mannion unseated Republican Rep. Brandon Williams, a freshman lawmaker who Democrats had pegged early in the election cycle as a vulnerable incumbent.

Mannion drew considerable support from labor organizations, including teachers unions. He will represent an area that has elected a Republican lawmaker to the House for the last decade.

Williams replaced moderate Republican Rep. John Katko in 2022 and, as a more conservative lawmaker, struggled to gain traction in the swing district. He is an enthusiastic supporter of former President Donald Trump and has been a staunch opponent of abortion.

Democrats gave Mannion a boost earlier this year when the district was redrawn to be slightly more favorable to their party’s nominee.

And Williams’ case didn’t get much help in the race’s final days when House Speaker Mike Johnson said House Republicans would be supportive of repealing the CHIPS and Science Act. Johnson later said he misheard the question. The spending package, meant to spur high-tech development and jobs, has been a linchpin for Micron Technology to build a factory in the district.

Mannion’s success came after his own fumbles. Former staffers anonymously accused him of presiding over a toxic office culture, claims the publicly avuncular legislator denied.

Mannion, an Albany lawmaker first elected in 2020, also had to overcome Republican efforts to link him to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who remains deeply unpopular statewide in New York.

Williams’ campaign released a TV ad featuring John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted” fame blasting his Democratic rival over public safety — an issue that has resonated for Republican campaigns. The ad yoked Mannion to Hochul, and by extension Democratic Albany.

But Mannion sidestepped the associations with Hochul by focusing on his legislative record in the state Senate and hammering Williams over abortion and IVF access.

He has not been supportive of left-leaning criminal justice measures in Albany and has voted against bills that would limit solitary confinement in state prisons.

Both candidates were supportive of the CHIPS and Science Act, making Johnson’s botched comments over appealing the measure last week all the more damaging to the Republican’s slim chances.

Micron plans to build four computer chip manufacturing facilities in the Syracuse area — a project that was spurred by the federal package and the Hochul administration.

The construction will include $6.1 billion in federal spending and $5.5 billion of incentives from New York state. Officials have been optimistic the spending will be a jobs boon to a region that has been stuck in the economic doldrums for more than a generation.

Mannion touted his support for a state-level provision meant to encourage Micron’s construction of the facilities.

A Williams’ victory was not expected by either party, and privately New York Republicans had all but written off their chances of holding the seat.

House GOP women still have a numbers problem.

Four years after a wave of elected conservative women reshaped the ranks of the House GOP conference, Republican women have watched their gains in the chamber stagnate — and it seems likely they’ll see losses in 2025. Even if they keep the House, they’re set to lose every sitting female chair.

It’s a dynamic that’s frustrating some women throughout the conference, who want to see an even more explicit commitment to growing their ranks from top party leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson.

While House Republicans have a record high 34 women serving in the chamber, or about 15 percent of their conference, it doesn’t compare to the 92 women in the Democratic caucus.

“We are 10 years behind,” said Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), who was elected to Congress in 2020. “We don’t have a deep bench of women. We don’t have a big pool to choose from. We’ve got to fix that. And I think our class was the start of that.”

That frustration comes as gender has played a critical role in the strategies of both presidential campaigns. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has made outreach to women a central focus of her three-month campaign, centered around Republican efforts to further restrict abortion since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, who has been found liable for sexual abuse, is running a pro-male campaign that prioritizes messaging to men. He’s appeared on male-friendly podcasts like “Kill Tony,” “BS w/ Jake Paul” and the “Joe Rogan Experience” where he has talked about golf, boxing, UFOs, and more as he chases the “bro vote.”

But those efforts could come at the cost of women voters up and down the ballot, as the Republican Party reckons with a significant — and possibly widening — gender gap. Female GOP lawmakers worry that, without a deep bench of women in institutions like the House, the party won’t have the voices at the top that it needs to address those political and cultural issues over time.

In interviews with 24 House Republican women, many said efforts to bolster their ranks suffer from a fundamental problem: The demands of serving in Congress aren’t conducive to raising a family. And several argued that the Republican Party’s focus on the importance of traditional nuclear families adds cultural pressures that they don’t believe Democratic women have to deal with in the same way. Republican women said they are often still saddled with questions like: “What about your family?” “Are your children OK without you?” or “How is your husband doing?”

“People are harder on moms who get involved in politics. I also think, on our side, out in conservative circles, women are more likely to want a traditional family model, where they stay home with their kids. And those critical years, where men tend to get involved in politics, a lot of women are not,” said Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah). “But I support all moms regardless of what career path they choose.”

Democratic women said that those challenges are daunting for them as well; they argue their party has simply invested far more aggressively in elevating women. Florida Rep. Lois Frankel, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, disputed GOP suggestions that there’s less pressure on mothers in their party.

“Democratic women are committed to their families as much as Republican women. That, to me, is a no-brainer to say,” she said. “I disagree with them when they say women are waiting to get older [before running].”

Still, the Republican Party broadly has consistently struggled to appeal to women. Female voters have favored Democratic presidential candidates by double digits in every election since 2008 — 55 percent of women voted for Joe Biden in 2020 vs. 44 percent for Donald Trump.

If GOP women can significantly increase their numbers in the House, then they believe they would kickstart a powerful domino effect: Filling the Senate with more Republican women, bolstering their message to voters across the country and perhaps even paving the way for a Republican woman to secure the party’s nomination for president.

Some said that the progress they’ve made so far supports that theory: New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, was seriously considered as Trump’s vice presidential candidate earlier this year.

But many House Republican women say it’s still a struggle to even be considered as a candidate, citing a persistent boys-club mentality in some local party chapters that they feel pushes male candidates forward over more qualified female candidates.

Some House GOP women are demanding changes. Perhaps the most vocal lawmaker on that front right now is conservative Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who is threatening to withhold her vote for GOP leader unless the House gives new moms a tool to vote from afar, like proxy voting. That push doesn’t have widespread support among Republican women, but other ideas have circulated about how to bolster their ranks come 2027.

The young family problem

Conservative GOP women suggest the struggles of balancing a highly demanding job with raising a young family is even more pronounced for them than it is for their Democratic counterparts. They cited a stronger cultural embrace of the need for a children-first and careers-second approach — an attitude that many of them agree with.

“If you do this job right, and you do it really well, you work a ton, and it isn’t super conducive to raising a family. It’s just not,” said McClain, who noted she spent only a handful of nights at home in August because she was on the road campaigning.

Raising young children while working is never easy, but serving in Congress comes with some particular hardships. There are significant pressures for lawmakers to raise their families at home in their district, though the schedule requires them to be in Washington for weeks at a time.

That’s not to say it can’t be done. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Julia Letlow (R-La.), Luna, Stefanik and others have juggled the demands of the job and motherhood, success stories that women believe are chipping away at a mindset that women can’t be a mother to young children and serve in Congress at the same time.

Stefanik, the top woman in House GOP leadership, said seeing McMorris Rodgers raising young kids in office helped give her “the confidence to run as conference chair while I was expecting my child,” and suggested views about the limits of motherhood are “changing over time.”

Others said the problem has persisted.

“When Laurel Lee called me and she said, ‘I have a [school-aged] daughter, should I do this?’ I was like, ‘I’m the wrong person to call because I wouldn’t have done it,’” said Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), referring to a Florida lawmaker who was elected to the House in 2022. “But she chose to do it. And it’s working out for her. So, I think, as we get more women, there’ll be more examples of: We can do it, too.”

“I think that that bleeds over into why there might be less women in Congress,” Lesko added.

There are two main efforts to rectify those concerns. Luna is pushing to allow proxy voting in lieu of maternity leave, while others are lobbying for a wider change to the House’s schedule, which typically has members in Washington for three or more weeks at a time.

Luna, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said her vote for GOP leader will be contingent on that person making concessions for new moms in the upcoming rules package. Proxy voting policies are widely disliked among Republicans, who had argued during the Covid pandemic that lawmakers owed it to their constituents to show up in person and that the way Democrats went about it was unconstitutional. But Luna said her proposal would be different, and she’s gotten back-up from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) on the idea.

“If they want my vote for speaker, amongst some other things, they’re going to have to say that we’re going to actually do that in the rules packages,” Luna said in an interview.

While Luna indicated that current leaders are more “into the times” and open to it, Stefanik quickly shut down the possibility, arguing that the party opposes proxy and remote voting. Other GOP women lawmakers said they would consider it for “specified reasons” that would go beyond having a baby, including serious health concerns. The challenge, they argued, is making sure members don’t take advantage of the system.

Other women are pushing for major changes to the schedule, including one that would allow them to be in Washington for two weeks and then spend two weeks back home. They said that would allow for better work-life balance.

“When I came in, it was Covid times, and so the schedules were more amenable to families. My kids were in middle school at the time, and it worked really well. Now that we’re back to a normal session, the travel is grueling,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). “So one of the things that I’ve advocated for and would support would be a schedule that’s more family-friendly.”

Said another member, granted anonymity to speak candidly: “I think, particularly for male members, they have a different thought process about the need to be home than I do. And the way they set the schedule is difficult.”

Wanted: More resources

Stefanik is frequently credited by members for her significant efforts to spearhead recruitment of female candidates, mainly through her women-focused Elevate PAC, known as E-PAC. Other, less formal efforts have also cropped up. But generally, conservative women still feel like they don’t have enough resources.

Only two conservative GOP women candidates appear likely to win their House seats in November, while four Republican women in the House — including one non-voting member — are leaving at the end of this term. Four other House Republican women are at risk of losing their races.

Stefanik indicated there’s plenty of interest in serving in Congress; she believes that more than a thousand women have reached out to her since she began her PAC. And she has raised more than $3 million this cycle for the cause of electing more women.

“When I started E-PAC in 2018, it was because there clearly was a problem. We lost a number of women in that blue-wave year, and we were down to 13 women. … It was clear to me that we needed to do better,” Stefanik said in an interview. “I think we can still get above 36 next cycle.” (There are currently 34 voting women in the House GOP and two who are non-voting.)

Others are also engaging in separate efforts to recruit more women, including doing so on the individual level. Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), for example, leads efforts to recruit more diverse women in her state, after crediting former GOP Reps. Mimi Walters and Dana Rohrabacher for encouraging her own House run. Some also point to two other groups who help boost women in races: ViewPAC and Winning for Women.

Still, some GOP women say they need resources akin to Democrats’ Emily’s List, which prepares female candidates to run for office.

Emily’s List is seen as more thorough and centralized in its efforts to recruit, fund and elect more women. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said that group tells Democrats “step by step how to run a campaign.” But that’s not a universal view in the party: Stefanik argued against centralizing the effort, and instead indicated they should work on a pipeline at the state and local levels.

While many GOP women indicated they were pleasantly surprised that the House itself doesn’t feel like a boys club these days, they said that attitude persists in some local party chapters — where they argued male candidates sometimes get picked over more qualified women candidates.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said she personally experienced this scenario in 2015, when the local party backed Dan Donovan to run over her in a special election. Stefanik later encouraged her to run in 2020. Donovan was elected twice to the seat before he was beaten by a Democrat, who Malliotakis then defeated by 6 points and handily beat again in 2022.

And Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who previously worked on recruitment for the National Republican Congressional Committee, remembered fighting with members of her party as she and other GOP women sought to back Stefanik’s initial bid for the House back in 2014.

“There were some that would have chosen a different candidate, and I think that was the first time that we women really collectively stood up and roared,” Wagner said.

Multiple sitting GOP women recalled being urged to run, whether by a party leader or, more rarely, an outgoing male incumbent. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy earned praise for his efforts to expand the party’s reach on this front. Some explicitly said they hope Speaker Johnson will carry that torch, though they don’t think they can judge him based on the latest cycle, given he ascended to the post after recruitment efforts had largely concluded.

Still, some women said they have missed McCarthy’s pointed efforts to seek out opportunities for women.

“With the McCarthy team, everything was very calculated and planned out. You know, he’d been planning for this for years … now I just feel kind of underutilized,” said one GOP woman, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. She acknowledged that she could’ve done more to assert herself, but added: “It was just nice to be asked and to be able to get that experience. It can be hard to put yourself out there.”

Many GOP women lawmakers said they have tried to encourage and recruit women in their own districts, with varying success. One example is Lesko, who is retiring at the end of this term.

“I was hoping that a woman would replace me. I called several women that I knew in Arizona, and they didn’t want to do it,” she said.

Democrats vs. Republicans

There are nearly three times as many House Democratic women as Republican women. And GOP lawmakers acknowledge part of that is due to how much earlier Democrats invested in recruiting women.

Nancy Pelosi, the first female House speaker, said Democrats were intentional about boosting their female ranks. It was “a decision that we made to recruit, to fund, to train.” In addition to more membership, Democratic women in the House have also ascended to higher leadership positions than their GOP counterparts.

“When I came years ago, it was 12 [women] Democrats, 11 Republicans. We’ve gone up to 94 in this Congress,” Pelosi added, counting two non-voting Democratic women who are currently serving. “And lately, the Republicans have gotten more, but for a while they were really far behind.”

But Republican women also contend that Democrats are less sensitive to charges about elevating women at least partially based on their gender. (Democrats disagreed with any suggestion that they prioritize quantity over quality.)

“Nothing is worse than people saying you’re a ‘token’ — that you didn’t earn your seat,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.).

That extends the other way, of course — Republican women don’t want to feel limited in potential opportunities because of their gender, either. And some said those practices still occur in their party, citing the so-called Pence rule: Former Vice President Mike Pence has publicly said he had a policy against meeting alone or having dinner with women, even staffers, out of respect for his marriage. One GOP woman, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that’s extremely limiting and suggested there are other, gender-neutral ways to set up those boundaries.

Another remarked: “I understand where it’s coming from, but how else are women supposed to have professional lives as long as men are going out — having dinner and cocktails and playing golf and everything else they’re doing — and we’re not part of that?”

Frankel, the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, contended that a broader “cultural bias” impacts both parties. For example, a male wealthy hedge fund manager will have access to more money than a woman who previously worked as a teacher, she said. And that goes back to the real reason Democrats had more women in office, she argued: The party invests more in female candidates.

“A very, very big factor, especially running for higher office and even Congress, is access to money. And traditionally, it is men — because of the professions they are in, the people they know, the people they hang out with — who have the relationships to raise the money that is necessary to win,” Frankel said.

‘If it involved a vagina, I’m talking about it’

Several GOP women said they felt leaders expected them to serve as a mouthpiece for issues men didn’t feel comfortable talking about, like abortion — putting many of them in a basket they didn’t want to be in.

Republican women said a few issues have recently fallen into that category: baby formula affordability, women’s health care, in vitro fertilization and certain parts of education. And while they’re happy to speak on those policies sometimes, many resented that their male counterparts would mainly turn to them on those issues.

One conservative woman, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said she specifically told Republicans as she came into the House that she was “not your poster child for abortion.”

“Every time there’s a bill that has to do with sexual assault, rape kit testing, you name it, if it involves a vagina, I’m talking about it in [committee],” said another conservative woman. “That’s OK, as long as it does not stop there and you think of me for the other issues.”

Some women do want to be leading voices on those issues. Mace has openly discussed her perspective as a rape victim and has been vocal on abortion access, the backlog on processing rape kits and boosting IVF and access to contraception — positions that don’t always align with the broader party.

And that lack of representation at the top could get worse next year. House Republicans are about to lose all of their sitting female committee chairs, though it’s possible other women will secure top posts in the next Congress.

While the party is publicly against quotas, GOP women said House leadership is certainly guilty of talking about the need for a woman to be in leadership or lead a committee or fill a post on a male-dominated panel. Whether a woman’s resume is a good fit becomes a secondary talking point, they said.

A frequently cited example was when former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — the highest-ranking woman in the House GOP at the time — was booted from leadership, and initial talk of replacing her involved a lot of talk about gender. Stefanik, who raised her hand for the job early, eventually was elected to the spot.

“When we removed Liz Cheney as chair, then it was: ‘We have to replace her with a woman.’ So that’s not discrediting Elise Stefanik in her role and what she’s done, but immediately the conversation was: She has to be replaced by a woman,” Boebert said. “The qualification was secondary. And she’s done a phenomenal job.”

Democrats in Congress for years have labeled Donald Trump an “insurrectionist,” impeached him for stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and suggested he is constitutionally prohibited from returning to the White House.

But even as those lawmakers continue to doubt Trump’s eligibility for the presidency, they also say that if he wins at the polls, they don’t expect efforts to deny him his presidential electors on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress meets to finalize the results.

Democratic leaders are saying publicly and privately they want a drama-free transfer of power — even if it means setting aside some members’ views that Trump is ineligible to return to the presidency because of the Constitution’s bar on insurrectionist officeholders.

The 14th Amendment prohibits any federal officeholders who have “engaged in” insurrection from holding office again, and Democrats have long suggested Trump ran afoul of it when he inflamed the violent mob that attacked the Capitol four years ago. At the time, House Democrats overwhelmingly voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” Their leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has routinely called Trump the “insurrectionist-in-chief.” But there appears to be little appetite among Democrats to challenge results during the Jan. 6 joint session.

“The integrity of our democratic process depends on the peaceful transfer of power. Donald Trump has decided that the only valid elections are elections he wins,” Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said in a statement to POLITICO. “He is the only President who has supported an insurrection rather than accept the will of the American people. Democrats will always ensure every vote counts and that we uphold our democracy.”

The Supreme Court waded into the issue in March, ruling that only Congress, not states, can decide how the Constitution’s insurrectionist ban should be enforced. But the court did not take a position on whether Trump’s conduct crossed the line — and that omission has left some constitutional experts to wonder whether Trump’s adversaries in Congress could try to settle the question of his eligibility at the Jan. 6 session.

It has created an awkward dynamic for House Democrats: Can lawmakers who have declared Trump ineligible to hold office nevertheless support voting to certify his presidential electors, even if it puts him back in the White House? For now, they’ve sidestepped that tension and projected confidence that they will, in fact, certify a Trump victory.

Clark’s message echoes similar comments other top Democrats have made in the run-up to the election. The bottom line, they say, is that unlike Republicans in 2020 — and those still equivocating today about whether they would certify a Harris victory — Democrats have no interest in causing uncertainty and chaos in the transfer of power.

“House Democrats are going to do everything necessary to protect our democracy, defend the transfer of power and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is certified on Jan. 6 without drama or consequences,” Jeffries said in September.

Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the committee that oversees election procedures, was similarly unequivocal during a recent debate: “If Donald Trump wins the election on November 5th, I will vote to certify him as the next president of the United States.”

Aides say Democratic leaders hope to squelch potential calls by their rank-and-file to invoke the Constitution’s insurrection clause as a basis for trying to prevent a popularly-elected Trump from returning to office.

When Congress meets on Jan. 6 to count electoral votes, lawmakers are largely bound to accept the states’ certified results. But federal law gives Congress the power to challenge the validity of electors they deem not “regularly given.” A federal appeals court judge recently opined that a candidate ineligible to hold office under the insurrection clause would be a valid basis for Congress to reject presidential electors in January.

Jason Murray, the attorney who argued the 14th Amendment case on behalf of those seeking Trump’s disqualification, warned the justices that this could create a crisis on Jan. 6, 2025.

“What happens when members of Congress on January 6th, when they count the electoral votes, say we’re not going to count electoral votes cast for President Trump because he’s disqualified?” Murray wondered during oral arguments in the case.

Just weeks before the Supreme Court ruled, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a constitutional lawyer and prominent ally of House leaders — warned that this scenario could come to pass without clarity from the justices.

“They want to kick it to Congress so it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025 to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified,” Raskin said on Feb. 8, describing hypothetically what could happen if the Supreme Court failed to apply the 14th Amendment to Trump, “and then we need bodyguards for everybody and civil war conditions all because the nine justices … simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great 14th Amendment means.”

But in the ensuing eight months, neither Raskin nor any of his colleagues have endorsed using the Jan. 6 joint session to attempt to deny Trump his electors.

“No one is talking about that,” Raskin said in a recent interview.

Other Democrats have explicitly disclaimed such an attempt.

“Rep. [Diana] DeGette would not vote to reject Trump’s electoral votes based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause,” said a spokesperson for the Colorado Democrat, who helped lead the impeachment trial against Trump in 2021.

Democrats, loath to publicly discuss a scenario in which Trump wins the election, have privately said they have not heard any discussions about invoking the insurrection clause to deny Trump his electors, whether he wins or loses. Publicly, dozens of Democrats in the House and Senate have vowed to affirm the results of the election even if Trump wins.

Their intentions belie what constitutional scholars say is a genuine conundrum created by the Supreme Court.

“It’s a serious problem,” said Gerard Magliocca, an Indiana University constitutional scholar who testified in Colorado proceedings that Trump had in fact violated the insurrection clause.

“It’s quite possible that Trump could take office without any legal determination that he is eligible to hold office.”

In its March opinion, the Supreme Court implied — though didn’t explicitly state — that Congress must pass legislation to lay out a procedure to determine whether a current or former officeholder has violated the insurrection clause. It’s a gap that leaves some uncertainty about what Congress’ obligations and options are in January.

But most constitutional scholars say it would be improper for lawmakers to make a subjective judgment about Trump’s eligibility without a forum to fully air and debate the facts.

“Congress does not have the capacity in the [Jan. 6] joint session to do so,” said Derek Muller, a University of Notre Dame constitutional law expert. “Because Congress is not in a position to decide the matter, Congress should count the votes.”

Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional scholar who has written about the insurrection clause, said the Supreme Court left a gap on this issue but doesn’t think members of Congress will step into the breach.

“Everything I’ve seen indicates that Democrats in Congress won’t attempt this,” Foley said.

In a hypothetical scenario in which Trump’s opponents controlled the House and Senate, with enough votes to disqualify his electors — “which they won’t have,” Foley noted — he said it’s unclear whether courts would step in to block the decision.