





































Wave or Trend


COMMONWEALTH, Volume 21, Issue 1 (2021). © 2021 The Pennsylvania Political Science Association.  
ISSN 2469-7672 (online). http://dx.doi.org/10.15367/com.v21i1.288. All rights reserved.

Wave or Trend

Female Candidates in Pennsylvania Elections  

in the Trump Era

JOSHUA J. WEIKERT
Immaculata University

The 2018 elections saw a record number of women running for elected office in 
the United States and in Pennsylvania, but whether this represents a temporary 
wave or a lasting trend is not clear. Using a combination of survey data; inter-
views of new candidates, elected officeholders, and party officials; and election 
data, this study examines the gender equality gains of 2018 in Pennsylvania’s 
legislature in historical and political context. The data provide evidence that 
formal recruitment of female candidates was common (but not universal), that 
the number of women running for and winning office increased by historic (and 
not just significant) levels, and that a persistent and consistent motivation was 
discernible in large portions of the candidate body. Survey measures of female 
candidate persistence—whether they plan to run again or recruit new candi-
dates—also indicate that women intend to remain similarly active after the 
2018 election cycle has come and gone.

“In 1992, women’s time may have come. . . . It seems clear that 1992 
has been a watershed of sorts and that the 1990s may well be the 
Decade of the Woman.” Thus wrote Delli Carpini and Williams in 

1993 (32, 36), citing a combination of factors such as the end of the Cold 
War and renewed salience for domestic issues in American politics, a greater 



54 JOShua J. weiKert

number of female candidates, new pro-women advocacy groups and PACs, 
recent Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion, and (most importantly, 
in the authors’ estimation) the Anita Hill testimony at the Clarence Thomas 
hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While 1992 did witness an 
increase in the number of women running for office, the results were less than 
encouraging in both the short and long term. Most 1992 female candidacies 
were unsuccessful, and the increased number of women running for office 
reverted rapidly to its earlier mean (Center for American Women in Politics 
2019). These results show that the optimism of 1992 was, perhaps, misplaced, 
and that 1992 represented a wave, not a trend. In the wake of the 2018 elec-
tions, we find ourselves again witnessing what appears to be a “Year of the 
Woman.” This article seeks to test, in a limited fashion, whether 2018 is simply 
a rerun of the wave of 1992, rising and cresting before its ultimate recession, 
or the beginning of a new trend toward greater representation by virtue of a 
shift in gender-relevant incentives and political conditions.

It is a basic, unassailable, empirical fact that women are underrepresented 
in American representative political bodies. The general belief in representa-
tional equality increasing as we get closer to the local level (“municipal advan-
tage”) is itself sometimes described as being more intellectually fashionable 
than empirically demonstrable, with findings that female representation in 
government hovers at about 25%, regardless of level (Tolley 2011, 573). Indeed, 
at present the municipal advantage “trend” actually reverses at the local level. 
Of the 1,365 cities and towns in the United States with a population greater 
than 30,000, only 21.8% have female mayors (Center for American Women 
in Politics 2019). The Pennsylvania General Assembly is below average for 
women in state legislatures as a whole. What is, perhaps, most remarkable is 
that this below-average performance represents a substantial improvement 
over recent history: a record number of women sought office in the 2018 elec-
tion cycle (Caygle 2018), and the 2018 elections added substantial numbers of 
women to the Pennsylvania House (a net of 9 gains, from 42 to 51) and nearly 
doubled the number of women in the Senate (from 7 to 12).

This study examines whether this is a unique event brought about by the 
current political climate or whether it represents a fundamental (and, poten-
tially, lasting) change in electoral politics in the Commonwealth. Gender 
equality in the General Assembly is not exactly the main focus here, though 
it represents a starting point. The questions addressed here are whether the 
gains that we have seen (or are likely to see) are sustainable, and whether these 
women running for office represent a statistical anomaly or the vanguard of a 
new more-gender-equal legislative bloc. In order to predict sustainable prog-
ress toward gender parity in representative bodies, we need to see more than 



Wave or Trend 55

just a historical-contextual increase in the percentage of women running for 
or are in office in one year or term. After all, as 1992 showed, political “Year[s] 
of the Woman” have been touted in the past only to be followed by a reversal 
or subsequent slowing of representational progress. Is 2018 different, and if so, 
how is it different? There are three conditions that would be necessary (if not 
necessarily sufficient) to justify the belief that recent gains in representation 
are likely to be persistent:

• Substantively significant recruitment of female candidates by party 
leaders (“recruitment,” as defined in this article, refers to an approach 
by a party official or activist toward an individual to solicit candi
dacy, per Norris 2006) (see Brown, this issue)

• An increase in the number of women who run for office (whether 
recruited or self-selected)

• An underlying and persistent motivating factor that incentivizes 
female candidacy.

-

Why these three conditions? The first two speak to the necessities of get-
ting to the starting gate and running the race as general preconditions of 
winning seats and shifting the gender percentages in these bodies. If women 
are not being recruited to run, or if political, social, and personal conditions 
are not conducive to women deciding to seek office, then gains are not pos-
sible. A measurable and robust level of active, formal recruitment by a party 
or parties could signal an institutional commitment to greater gender bal-
ance, a perception that women are more “electable” and that such candidacies 
are more likely to be successful in the political climate, or both. At the same 
time, an increase in the number of women who are receptive to recruitment or 
who bypass it completely and decide to run without recruitment is a signal of 
greater overall female interest in candidacy and prospective erosion of the so-
called “ambition gap.” The third condition speaks to the question of whether 
gains are sustainable, not merely possible: the circumstances that create a 
wave are not the same as an environmental shift that will reliably increase 
female candidacy or success, and it is the latter that is required if the wave is to 
become a trend. Is 2018 the new 1992? As in 1992, more women sought office, 
but they experienced greater success and the motivation for their candidacies 
is, arguably, less tied to the specific contemporary events of recent years and 
more closely relatable to a persistent and future-oriented policy “threat.” The 
survey data generated by this study (as well as the electoral outcomes of 2018) 
suggest that, in fact, this may be the beginning of a trend rather than the end 
of a wave.



56 JOShua J. weiKert

Background: Getting to the Starting Gate

This is about the decision to run for office. Whether a shift toward gender-
equal representation is a wave or a trend, the first stage is the same: an increase 
in the number of women seeking office. No one is elected who does not throw 
their hat into the ring—and historically comparatively few decide to throw 
their hat into the ring who are not recruited (Norris 1997). This is especially 
true for women, who historically are less likely to consider themselves as 
prospective candidates (Lawless and Fox 2008). The “ambition gap” (itself a 
combination of a lack of recruitment, a lack of interest in campaigning, and 
self-perceived lack of electoral viability) increases the salience of the factors 
that go into candidate recruitment. Recruitment is thus, in turn, central to our 
understanding of gender representation, at least in the absence of an external 
or contextual factor that may encourage more women to proactively seek pub-
lic office. Who gets to the starting gate?

Candidate recruitment is not an area that has been ignored or even neces-
sarily neglected by our discipline: it only seems so in comparison to the ava-
lanche of studies in related areas within the campaigns-and-elections subfield. 
There is valuable work illustrating models of candidate recruitment, the role 
of parties and partisanship in state/local and federal candidate recruitment, 
and prospective candidate selection criteria. With this context established, 
the rationale for the survey methodology employed becomes more intuitive: 
assessing the sustainability of the present level of political interest and activity 
among female office-seekers in Pennsylvania requires more than the “who” 
answers provided by the election data. It also benefits substantially from an 
assessment of why those women reached the starting gate and whether they 
intend to assist others in reaching it and run more races themselves. The 
responses of the candidates offer unique insights into the process and envi-
ronment described below.

The Party Decides

The general model of candidate recruitment (see Norris 1997 for a detailed 
description) maps out a series of narrowing gates, beginning with formal legal, 
electoral, and party barriers to entry that limit the pool of prospective candi-
dates. Those who pass through this initial screening may then be subjected 
to a recruitment process in which both formal and informal rules and pro-
cedures further limit the supply of aspirants to office and which incorporates 
the demands of partisan gatekeepers. The interaction between gatekeepers 
and aspirants leads to an outcome in which either actor may play a veto role, 
though the existing literature places significant focus on the decision-making 



Wave or Trend 57

power of the partisan gatekeeper in addition to that of the aspirant (Norris 
and Lovenduski 1993; Kunovich and Paxton 2005; Cheng and Tavits 2011; see 
Sweet-Cushman 2018 for a Pennsylvania sample). Admittedly, the partisan 
“path to power” is much more tightly guarded in European and Canadian poli-
tics, whereas in the United States virtually any individual can choose to run for 
public office, recruited or not. Despite this relative lack of party power to for-
mally block unrecruited candidates from the ballot in the United States, there is 
evidence to suggest that the affirmative element of recruitment—that it acts as 
a stimulus to candidacy among potential candidates—is a feature shared in the 
American system. Ambition (or lack thereof) is a commonly described feature 
of the representational gender gap, but formal recruitment provides a bridge 
that has the potential to close that gap (Preece, Stoddard, and Fisher 2016).

The specific functioning of this general model is affected by structural 
factors, most notably the organizational model of the party in question (which 
is, naturally, also a function of the electoral system in question). Recent stud-
ies note that even in relatively open electoral systems, a cartel model pre-
dominates. Although formal barriers are set relatively low, the recruitment 
networks operated by partisan cartels—whether formal or informal—are 
largely closed (Rallings et al. 2010; Aldrich 2000). Data suggest that most can-
didates are selected and approached to stand for office, rather than being eval-
uated following a proactive application for consideration by the prospective 
candidate in question (Rallings et al. 2010, 370). This cartel model—featuring 
a professionalized political class of gatekeepers—results in candidates with a 
generally higher level of quality than those in systems with more “wildcat” or 
insurgent candidacies, but at the expense of a more-insular and less-diverse 
body of candidates (Krouwel 2006, 250).

Partisanship and party competition are demonstrably related to the level 
of interest in candidate recruitment, if not the fundamental results (which 
candidates end up on the ballot). This has been disputed in terms of recruit-
ment for local offices, with one theory positing that local politics is insulated 
from broader questions of partisan conflict (Williams and Adrian 1959), 
though the theory has not been consistently supported. However, at higher 
echelons of party office-seeking (national and prominent subnational offices 
such as governors), parties are intimately involved in the candidate recruit-
ment process, especially when competition is pronounced. The motivation 
and rationale is perfectly summarized in Sanbonmatsu:

Party scholars have long theorized that party competition is related to 
party organizational strength (e.g., Beck 1974; Crotty 1968; Key 1949; 
Patterson and Caldeira 1984; Schlesinger 1985). Whether the parties 



58 JOShua J. weiKert

successfully recruit candidates helps determine whether voters are 
offered a choice between the two major parties on election day (e.g. 
Downs 1957). Because capturing office is arguably the main goal of 
the party (Downs 1957; Schlesinger 1975), fielding candidates is a nec-
essary condition for parties to win elections. As Seligman (1961, 77) 
summarizes: “The recruitment of political candidates is a basic func-
tion of political parties: a party that cannot attract and then nominate 
candidates surrenders its elemental opportunity for power.” (2006, 235)

Sanbonmatsu found little evidence of an explicit gender bias, but did note that 
party recruiters and gatekeepers tended to be men, which creates a like-type and 
in-network bias which almost certainly decreases the probability of recruiting 
women. Contrary to “insulation” doctrine, we have evidence in the literature 
(as well as in this study) that local-level party organizations engage in recruit-
ing at about the same intensity level as state- and national-level party organiza-
tions (Kazee and Thornbury 1990, 61). At a minimum, then, we should expect 
that any increase in female representation (itself being a product of increased 
representation in candidacy) to be at least somewhat reliant on an increase in 
female candidate recruitment (and, very probably, female recruiters).

Gender as a Variable

There is a heavy emphasis in the political science literature on the “gendered” 
nature of political candidate recruitment, examining whether screening based 
on gender is limiting diversity in politics (Norris and Lovenduski 1993). Not 
all candidates are necessarily recruited, nor are all recruits necessarily candi-
dates. In the absence of recruitment, though, gender-specific aversion to elec-
toral competition (the aforementioned ambition gap) and the “care penalty” 
(sociological bias in the assigning of child and elder care duties which dispro-
portionately overburdens women) are difficult to overcome, and recruitment 
increases by several times the probability of a woman to run for office (Fox 
and Lawless 2010; Kanthak and Woon 2015). Thus, gender as an independent 
variable influencing the probability of recruitment is an important consider-
ation in determining gender equality in representative bodies.

There is consistent evidence that gender is a factor in recruitment both 
at the state and national levels (Thomas 1994), and that the male advantage 
in recruitment exists whether it is the party or a nonpolitical actor doing the 
recruiting (Lawless and Fox 2008, 8). This lack of distinction between fed-
eral and state recruitment mirrors the overall lack of representation noted 
earlier at the federal and state levels and municipal offices. Moreover, we 



Wave or Trend 59

see that this trend exists in both parties (Freeman 2000), though it should 
be noted that recent history indicates an increasing asymmetry (Center for 
American Women in Politics 2019). The Republican Party has become more 
male- dominated in numbers of nominees and elected officials even as the 
Democratic Party becomes more representative (though still unequal), which 
reflects a growing gender gap between the parties more generally (Rubin 
2018). There is also evidence that partisanship plays a role in the success or 
failure of female recruitment, with Democratic women being more respon-
sive, on average, than Republican women (Sanbonmatsu 2002; Preece, Stod-
dard, and Fisher 2016). The gender of the recruiter is also positively correlated 
with increases in the number of female candidates. Women are more likely to 
recruit women (Cheng and Tavits 2011; Crowder-Meyer 2013) and are more 
likely to run when being recruited by women (Sanbonmatsu 2006, 235).

Research also indicates that even when women are recruited for candidacy, 
it is more likely to be for a run as a “sacrificial lamb” in a long-shot district 
than as a competitive candidate, and that female incumbents are less “safe” 
than male incumbents (Bernstein 1986; Carroll 1994; Thomas and Bodet 
2013). This kind of symbolic recruitment or nomination is counterproductive. 
Not only does it not realistically increase the likelihood of gender equality in 
the legislatures in question, it creates an impression that female candidates 
are an electoral liability and not productive targets for candidate recruitment. 
This almost certainly has downstream effects when parties allocate electoral 
resources (funding, volunteers, staff, and so on). However, parties do not have 
exclusive control over the machinery of candidacy. Women can proactively 
decide to run even if not recruited, and parties may also encounter shifts in 
public sentiment that incentivize the recruitment of female candidates.

Ultimately, gendered recruitment is a major factor in lack of representa-
tion. The probability of deciding to run for office (controlling for other factors 
like self-perceived electability, qualifications, time availability, and interest) 
nearly triples for a woman who is recruited to run for office compared to a 
woman who is not (Fox and Lawless 2010, 321). Recruitment is not so much 
a nudge as a shove, and it is of sufficient magnitude to overcome much of the 
reluctance and “election aversion” demonstrated in the literature.

“The Trump Effect”

The conditions noted previously and their impact on the supply of female 
candidates (how many women want to run, how many women are recruited to 
run?) and the demand for female candidates (are voters more likely to vote for 
women?) are unlikely to change suddenly in the course of one or two election 



60 JOShua J. weiKert

cycles. What if a political proximate cause was sufficiently jarring to the sys-
tem so that a larger shift was caused that provoked a new equilibrium, rather 
than just a shock followed by a reversion to the mean? This brings us to the 
election in 2016 of Donald Trump. By any standard this was a political shock.

What remains to be seen is what effect it ultimately has on the universe 
of candidates and electoral victors. After all, the treatment of Anita Hill 
prompted an increase in the number of women seeking office in 1992, but 
the net result (in its own era and in comparison to the years since) shows 
that it did not set off a larger trend of women running for or winning public 
office (Delli Carpini and Williams 1993; Center for American Women in Poli-
tics 2019). Indeed, in Pennsylvania the 1992 “Year of the Woman” elections 
yielded an increase in the number of women in the House of Representatives 
of only 3, from 21 to 24. Prior to the 2018 elections, that number had increased 
to 41 in a generally steady rise with no particular external causes (Pennsylva-
nia Center for Women and Politics 2019).

Would there be a “Trump Effect”? This was the question pursued by Law-
less and Fox (2017) in their report of the same name. The overall argument 
for gendered effects from the election of Donald Trump is outlined by Lawless 
and Fox early on in their report (2017, 1–2): the policy agenda proposed during 
the 2016 campaign, sexist statements by Trump the candidate, and President 
Trump’s personal history with women (which includes multiple accusations 
of sexual harassment or assault) combine to motivate political engagement 
among women who would otherwise be unlikely to participate. It is not nec-
essarily the case that it is a gender exclusive effect—Trump undoubtedly pro-
voked reactions from those of both genders in both parties—but the survey 
data in Lawless and Fox show that women had a stronger reaction in terms of 
both interest and activity. They found that respondents to their survey were 
much more likely to take political action but were only slightly more likely to 
consider running for office. Lawless and Fox were cautiously pessimistic on 
the question of a “Trump Effect” resulting in more female candidates: “On 
balance, the evidence suggests that very few women will emerge from the 
overall pool of potential candidates” (2017, 12). 

Research Questions and Methodology

Thus, we return to the three conditions posited earlier. When we look at the 
2018 election, do we see:

• Substantively significant recruitment of female candidates by party 
leaders?



Wave or Trend 61

• An increase in the number of women who decide to run for office 
(whether recruited or self-selected)?

• An underlying and persistent motivating factor that incentivizes 
female candidacy?

Lawless and Fox (2017) apparently thought that we were unlikely to see 
these three things. However, such questions can now be answered empiri-
cally, and those answers can inform our assessment of whether a trend toward 
greater participation by women in the electoral process as candidates exists 
and is likely to continue and accelerate. Evaluating these questions can (addi-
tionally and conveniently) now be done in light of the results of the 2018 gen-
eral election. A high rate of success among the women who ran for office in 
2018 has the potential to activate the advantages of incumbency, protecting 
both the absolute gains made in gender equity in elected offices in the state 
as well as preserving the trend of greater female participation as candidates. 
Even absent that effect, though, there may still be reason to believe that a 
much more gender-equitable political recruiting environment will persist. If 
female candidates report that they are likely to run in future cycles regardless 
of outcome, that they plan to recruit other women to run, and if party leaders 
indicate a greater desire for female candidates, then we may reasonably con-
clude that this is more a trend than an anomaly.

Discerning motivation is a substantial challenge in social science research. 
Since the present and future motivations of the units of analysis in this case 
(the candidates themselves) are central to addressing the research questions 
posed earlier, a survey of those candidates that allows for the direct and indi-
rect assessment of those motivations is indicated. Clearly, any evaluation of 
potential incumbency advantage accrual also requires that we consider the 
election record as well. As a result, this research uses three bodies of data: 
pre-election surveys of female candidates, post-election follow-up with a por-
tion of those survey respondents, and the results of the 2018 Pennsylvania 
elections.

Election data were retrieved from the Pennsylvania Department of State 
Election Results website (https://electionreturns.pa.gov/). Survey data were 
generated by first compiling a list of all candidates for the Pennsylvania Gen-
eral Assembly, both the House of Representatives and the Senate. That list was 
then sorted by gender of the candidate and a list of female candidates was cre-
ated. Finally, the list was filtered to remove incumbent candidates who were 
running unopposed in the general election under the conclusion that their 
reported motivations could be qualitatively skewed by their lack of opposition 
and they have a fairly obvious answer to the question “why are you running 



62 JOShua J. weiKert

in this particular election cycle?” Two were removed who, though on the bal-
lot, had no published contact information or website; seven were added who 
were federal House of Representatives candidates. The resulting population 
comprised 119 names.

Each prospective respondent was individually emailed approximately one 
month prior to Election Day from an academic e-mail address. A follow-up 
group e-mail was sent to all prospective respondents two weeks later.

The survey itself comprised 16 questions. Fifteen were closed-ended ques-
tions collecting demographic information (gender, age), political information 
(party, office sought, number of previous candidacies or elections), and ques-
tions regarding recruitment and motivation (intention to run again, intention 
to recruit others to run). One question was open-ended, asking, “In your own 
words, what was the single greatest motivation in reaching your decision to 
run for office in this election cycle (or the most recent in which you were a can-
didate)?” Finally, the respondent was asked if she would be willing to have the 
researcher contact her with some follow-up questions. Such a format would 
allow for longer responses that might shed additional light on the responses.

Those who indicated a willingness to be contacted for follow-up were con-
tacted after the election by the method provided (e-mail or phone), and asked 
for additional thoughts or details on their “motivation” responses (why will/
won’t you run again after your win/loss, why will/won’t you be recruiting, any 
additional details/thoughts on the “why did you run” open-ended response?).

Analysis

In total, 29 individuals responded to the survey. Of those 29, 19 consented to 
be contacted for follow-up and clarification. The overwhelming majority of 
respondents were candidates for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives 
(26/29), which is consistent with the fact that the target population itself was 
roughly three-quarters candidates for the House. The respondents were pre-
dominately Democrats (n = 23, slightly overrepresented), with Republicans (n 
= 4) being underrepresented and Independents (n = 2) being overrepresented. 
Some level of self-selection bias was inevitable, but the characteristics of the 
group are not especially skewed, with one exception: respondents were over-
whelmingly first-time candidates rather than experienced campaigners. Of 
the 29, only 1 was an incumbent in the office she was seeking, and 22 of the 
respondents were in their first campaign. This, however, is a feature rather 
than a bug given the questions under consideration, many of which seek to 
examine what (if anything) has changed since November 2016 and whether 
those changes are lasting or ephemeral.



Wave or Trend 63

Recruitment

Beginning with the recruitment questions, exactly half of the respondents 
report being recruited to run for office, half chose to run for themselves, and 
three did not respond. The question was framed in a generic form (“Were you 
recruited to run for office?”). “Encouragement” by friends and family was 
not explicitly considered “recruitment” for the purposes of this study (though 
in some surveys in the literature the question includes this kind of solicited 
response), but an open response “Other” option was included in the question 
asking for the identity or identities of those doing the recruiting, so respon-
dents were able to self-report the encouragement of informal actors/family 
members as recruitment if inclined to do so.

Respondents were then asked who recruited them and they could select 
as many as applied between several political and nonpolitical actors (and the 
aforementioned “Other”). Ten indicated recruitment by one or more political 
actors (a party official or elected officeholder), while three indicated recruit-
ment by a private citizen or group. The reported rate of recruitment seems 
low given the power of recruitment as a predictor of candidacy found in the 
literature, but the wording of the question (“Were you recruited”) may have 
encouraged respondents to think in terms of formal recruitment only, even 
though it was not explicitly framed as such. The reported positions of those 
doing the recruiting (by far the most common recruiters were party officials 
rather than elected officials or private citizens) does seem consistent with the 
party cartel model discussed earlier, and with the conclusion that respondents 
themselves were focused on “formal” conceptions of recruitment. At the same 
time it is possible that self-reporting (as in this survey) is a less-reliable means 
of measuring recruitment; research in which there is a researcher-defined 
recruitment as a treatment/independent variable necessarily means that every 
subsequent “effective” recruitment is captured in the data.

In follow-up interviews, the “unrecruited” did tend to indicate that they 
were encouraged to run by those within the party. Just more than half of 
interviewees who had previously stated they were not recruited stated in their 
interviews that they were at a later point encouraged to run by party leaders. 
Their negative responses in the initial survey were based on the fact that they 
had taken it upon themselves initially to attend a political or governmental 
meeting, and subsequently chose to run, often with a nudge from the party 
or elected officials with whom they were interacting. Thus, the “procedural 
cartel” argument still appears to hold water, at least in the sense that the party 
was still a factor in smoothing the path to candidacy for most of the respon-
dents. The most common comment in the follow-up interviews with regard to 



64 JOShua J. weiKert

recruitment was that the party was seen as a tool by all of the candidates—it 
provided a checklist and a path to beginning one’s candidacy. It was not, how-
ever, generally trusted or seen as particularly supportive once the campaigns 
began. As one interviewee put it, “they want you to run because they have a 
harder time than you’d think getting candidates, but once you’re in, they tend 
to leave you alone. Someone told me, ‘don’t expect anything from the party, 
and you’ll never be disappointed.’ I think that’s about right.”

Whether rates of recruitment are relatively higher than in past election 
cycles is not measured by the data, but in any case the purpose of the questions 
was to demonstrate that female candidate recruitment is both robust (among 
respondents, most indicate some level of formal or informal recruitment) and 
can contribute to an explanation for increases in the overall number of women 
running. Both conditions appear to be met by the data generated in the sur-
vey, though naturally this inference should be approached with appropriate 
skepticism given the sample size and the self-selection of said sample.

Motivation

The open-ended “motivation” question elicited a fairly narrow set of responses. 
These were loosely categorized into four groups (presented here alphabeti-
cally):

• Democracy: responses that mention systemic concerns such as a lack 
of electoral competition or partisan tribalism, or system-benefitting 
virtues like public service or civic duty

• Policy: responses that identify one or more specific policy areas or 

•  responses that specifically mention the election of Donald 
Trump as president in 2016

•  responses that indicate disagreement, broadly, with the ide-
ology or values of the incumbent officeholder or party

outcomes
“Trump”:

Values:

Of these five, democracy was cited most often (9 mentions), followed by values 
(6 mentions) and policy (5 mentions). Two respondents explicitly tied their 
candidacy to the election of President Trump.

In follow-up interviews, Democrats unanimously mentioned the Republi-
can Party by name as a motivating factor, regardless of whether their concerns 
were based on policy, values, or democratic values. Interestingly, only half 
mentioned President Trump, and all but one of those did so in the context 
that the “problem is bigger than Trump.” This was a view shared by those who 



Wave or Trend 65

did not mention Trump on their own. When those who had not mentioned 
Trump were prompted with his name, they shared some variation on this 
comment, made by one respondent: “The Republicans are Trump now. Who’s 
left that isn’t?” The three Republican respondents who answered the question 
did not share those motivations; all discussed education or a policy related to 
it (property tax reform, state budget funding formulas).

Observed partisan differences in candidate motivations (even given the 
extremely small sample size) are consistent with other findings related to can-
didate recruitment, cited earlier (Norris and Lovenduski 1993; Kunovich and 
Paxton 2005; Cheng and Tavits 2011). In this case, the arrangement of power 
in Harrisburg would be a logical explanation for the difference. Republicans 
control both chambers of the General Assembly, and Democrats would not 
reasonably expect to be in a majority in the upcoming election. Partisans of 
the in-power party have more incentive to think of office-seeking in terms of 
particular policymaking rather than as an act of resistance to broader political 
trends. It is not inconceivable that intraparty tension within the Republican 
Party could motivate candidacy, but such a motivation is not in evidence in 
these survey results.

One item of particular note emerged when comparing motivation across 
other subsets within the sample: among those who were not recruited, values 
was the most common motivation cited. In fact, none of those whose responses 
were sorted into the Values category were also in the “recruited” camp.

Persistence

Respondents were asked to provide answers on a scale of 1–5 (1 being “Defi-
nitely Yes” and 5 being “Definitely No”) on three measures of political “per-
sistence,” as a way to assess whether their involvement was likely to continue 
after Election Day. Two questions addressed the likelihood of running for 
election/reelection to office in the future: one question measured likelihood in 
the event of victory, the other in the event of a loss. The third question asked 
whether, regardless of the election outcome, the respondent planned to recruit 
others to run for office.

In the event of an electoral victory, most indicated they planned to run 
for reelection or election to another office. The modal average was “prob-
ably yes,” and 14 (roughly 58%) selected either “probably yes” or “definitely 
yes.” Only four (17%) selected “probably not,” and none selected “definitely 
not.” The mean numerical average of the responses was 2.46, indicating a 
general (though not overwhelming) level of interest in running for reelection. 
In  follow-up interviews, all who won indicated they would run for reelection. 



66 JOShua J. weiKert

One, who responded “probably yes” on the survey, said that she did so because 
she didn’t want to “tempt fate” by answering “definitely yes.”

Asked to picture an electoral loss, a substantial number (n = 10) still indi-
cated they would probably or definitely run again, while five claimed “defi-
nitely not.” The numerical mean, though, does not shift excessively, landing at 
3.04. This indicates only a very slight aversion toward a future run. In follow-
up interviews (post-election), even that slight aversion seemed muted. In the 
words of one respondent who said she would “definitely not” run again if 
she lost, “now that the campaign is over, I miss it. I miss seeing the people I 
was campaigning with [volunteers and other candidates], I miss walking and 
knocking. Even though I lost, I’m almost positive I’ll run again.” This is, it 
seems, simply harder to contemplate in the midst of a campaign. It’s possible 
that the self-reported drop in likelihood to run again in the event of a loss is 
a bit like asking a marathoner late in a race whether they’ll ever run a second 
marathon.

The likelihood of future recruitment question suggests that regardless of 
interest in running in a future election, recruiting is very likely to be part of 
their political activities moving forward. Two-thirds indicated they would 
“definitely” recruit and encourage others to run for office, and no respon-
dents selected “probably” or “definitely” not. These responses, taken in light 
of the findings already present in the literature, suggest that future candidate 
recruitment in Pennsylvania will include more women as recruiters, and sub-
sequently will potentially yield more female recruits.

Candidacies and Electoral Results

The Pennsylvania Department of State and the Pennsylvania Center for 
Women and Politics provide the data needed to compare the recently com-
pleted election cycle to the 2016 cycle and the longer historical trends. Given 
the focus here on effects of the 2016 election and their likely future impact, an 
explicit comparison of the gender composition of the ballot and results (for 
the Pennsylvania House and Senate) is indicated.

The 2018 general election ballot saw many more women than the 2016 bal-
lot. Across major and minor parties (and independent candidacies), there was 
an 80% increase in the number of female candidates in 2018 (106 candidates) 
compared to 2016 (59 candidates). It should be noted that although minor 
party candidates and independents are included in these counts, in neither 
year did they constitute a large number of the total candidacies.

The results of the 2018 election also demonstrate that female candidates 
performed well overall. Fifty-two women won their races for the House of 



Wave or Trend 67

Representatives, only 34 of whom were incumbents. In absolute terms, this 
was the single largest increase in the number of women in the House in its 
history (nine more women are serving in the new House compared to 2016). 
It is also the second-largest increase in growth year-over-year by percentage, 
beaten only by 1954 when the number of women jumped from five to eleven 
(though the paucity of women in the House in 1952 clearly made doubling 
their number a much simpler statistical feat). In the Senate, 2018 represents 
both the single largest gain in seats held by women and the biggest gain year-
over-year. Both numbers either beat (in the House) or tie (in the Senate) their 
previous “best” in terms of gender representation, and the General Assembly 
is now more than 25% female for the first time in its history (Pennsylvania 
Center for Women and Politics 2019).

Discussion

To reiterate, making the case that we are seeing something different that has 
the potential to generate something like gender equality in representative 
political institutions in Pennsylvania would likely require one or more of the 
following to be true: women being recruited for office, an increase in the num-
ber of women running for office (whether recruited or not), and some new and 
persistent motivating factor in the American political ecosystem. The data 
demonstrate support for at least two of these (and possibly three).

Formal v. Informal Recruitment and Gender

The respondents to the survey indicated that formal recruitment was cer-
tainly not atypical in their cases, but neither was it universal. The follow-
up interviews still suggest that political recruitment was a common feature, 
even if it did initially involve potential female candidates “presenting them-
selves at the door” by first becoming more affirmatively politically active 
before being recruited. “The Party Decides” might be an overstatement, but 
it is obviously still a prominent feature of the candidacy process. The party 
appears to be engaging in a form of “convenience recruitment”: selecting 
candidates from those who are more visible on the political activist stage and 
may be of either gender, rather than from the typical networks of otherwise-
prominent and powerful people who, due to patriarchal advantage, are more 
likely to be men. Ethnographic analysis of the candidate recruitment pro-
cess (in at least one participant-observer experience) followed a similar path 
(Weikert 2019), coming after an initial proactive contact of the local party 
committee.



68 JOShua J. weiKert

There is evidence, too, that the parties currently view female candidates 
favorably and are more likely to target them for recruitment in the future. 
One female party official tasked with recruiting candidates for the last two 
election cycles and interviewed for an earlier study (Weikert 2019) lamented 
of a prospective candidate, “the only thing that would make him better is if 
he were a woman.” Though anecdotal and party specific, that the sentence 
was uttered unprompted demonstrates that there is a perception that women, 
far from having to overcome being a risky choice for the ticket (now-inaccu-
rate conventional “wisdom”), may be electorally advantageous in the modern 
political climate. Importantly, this is from the perspective of someone doing the 
recruiting for a major political party.

“A Lot of Women Running”

Contrary to the prediction of Lawless and Fox, their assessment in The Trump 
Effect that “on balance, the evidence suggests that very few women will emerge 
from the overall pool of potential candidates” (2010, 12) was understandable 
but demonstrably incorrect in Pennsylvania. Their contention that high levels 
of interest would not likely yield a significant increase in female candidacies 
was consistent with historical cases, but did not bear out in this case. One of 
the survey respondents said in her interview, “it sure does seem like there are 
a lot of women running.” Indeed, there were. An 80% increase in the num-
ber of female candidacies does more than suggest that more women emerged 
from the overall pool of potential candidates—it shouts it. A few caveats are 
perfectly appropriate here, though.

First, this study only examined this phenomenon in one state—Pennsyl-
vania—and while reports broadly noted an increase in the number of women 
running in 2018, it is entirely possible that other states did not see such a 
dramatic increase. Second, Lawless and Fox’s statement may have suffered 
from simply misjudging who is counted in the “overall pool of potential can-
didates.” Politically jolted citizens may very well find themselves engaging 
with the political system. Finding that the barriers to entry for candidacy are 
not as high as they anticipated, they found themselves in the pool of poten-
tial candidates more readily and quickly than our discipline would expect. 
Last, this phenomenon was not observed broadly, but specifically: the increase 
in the number of female candidacies can be clearly tied to increases in the 
number of Democrats and, particularly, Democratic women on the ballot. As 
Democrats sought to compete in a larger number of races than they had in 
recent elections, it bears out logically and statistically that the partisan gender 
gap favoring women as candidates in the Democratic Party resulted in more 



Wave or Trend 69

women running in 2018. Thus, Lawless and Fox may have been correct in 
general, but were made incorrect by virtue of the fact that they did not account 
for a more wide-ranging electoral competition. Still, whatever the conditions 
and context, the outright surge of female candidacies (and their subsequent 
electoral success) cannot be denied.

Motivation and Persistence

A good circumstantial and qualitative case can be made that the motivation 
behind the surge of women on the ballot in 2018 is definable and persistent. 
Where Lawless and Fox may have overstated the case in The Trump Effect 
is that there was not nearly as much focus on Trump as we would expect. 
While Trump’s election was obviously a startling event for Democrats in gen-
eral and perhaps Democratic women in particular, that moment of reckoning 
prompted an evaluation of our political system as a whole—and by the can-
didates’ own reporting in this study it was the Republican Party rather than 
Donald Trump that animated their candidacies.

We see evidence for this in the “smoking non-recruitment gun.” Among 
the “unrecruited”—those who felt that they came to the system of their own 
volition rather than being drawn into it by active recruitment by political 
actors—there was a high incidence of noting a broad dissatisfaction with 
the governing Republican Party and its values and policy positions. This is 
important because in 2021 or 2025, President Donald Trump will become 
former President Donald Trump—but the Republican Party will remain. If 
Republicanism comes to be considered synonymous with Trumpism, then 
the departure of Donald Trump from the White House will not necessarily 
result in a sudden deflation in the motivation of Democratic women to run 
for political office. If it is these unrecruited women who Lawless and Fox did 
not expect, and who account for the upswing in the number of women seek-
ing office, then they are likely to continue to do so. This is all the more true 
if the Democratic Party increases its recruitment efforts among women, and 
still more true if the Republican Party—seeking to blunt the heuristic effects 
of female voters who may be more likely to vote for a female candidate—begin 
recruiting more women to run as well.

The survey and interview results in this study also suggest that the women 
engaged in the 2018 election cycle are likely to persist. Measures of persistence 
in this study—limited in sample size though they are—suggest that today’s 
female candidates will be tomorrow’s female candidates and that they plan 
to encourage others to join them. The question explicitly did not ask whether 
they planned to recruit other women to run, but we can reasonably conclude 



70 JOShua J. weiKert

that more women engaging in recruiting efforts will result in a greater degree 
of female representation. Either they will do so in a gender-blind way (which 
will naturally tend toward gender equality on the ballot), or they will exhibit 
the gendered recruiting tendencies discussed earlier, with women being more 
likely to recruit women and for those recruiting efforts to be more successful 
than those of men recruiting women (Sanbonmatsu 2006; Cheng and Tavits 
2011; Crowder-Meyer 2013). In either case, the important question is not “who 
will they recruit?” but “will they be recruiting?” The answer appears to be yes. 
Combined with the advantages of incumbency that will now also attach to 
the women elected in 2018, it is reasonable to conclude that this year’s election 
is more likely to represent an equilibrium-shifting event than an artifactual 
aberration.

One final note on persistence. Although not a central feature of this study 
(and based on an admittedly small sample), the data also suggest a partisan 
“persistence” gap. The Republican respondents in the survey were far less 
committed to running in a future election—even in the event of an electoral 
victory—than the Democrats. None of the four Republican respondents indi-
cated they would “definitely” run again even if they were to win, and sorting 
the responses by party also changes the “if you lose” persistence measure. 
Looking only at Democrats, a majority stated they would run again even 
if they lost in 2018. The implications of such a partisan persistence gap are 
unclear, but it does seem to buttress the idea that female Democrats (which 
represent most of the female candidates) view the political context as less of 
a short-term shock and more of a long-term problem. Such a viewpoint lends 
weight to the conclusion that recent gains are sustainable as part of a broader 
trend of increased female participation as candidates for elected office.

Conclusion: Year(s) of the Woman

The evidence that 1992 represented a watershed political moment and a 
realigning election year in the wake of the Anita Hill testimony in front of the 
Senate Judiciary Committee was always thin, even in the context of just that 
one election year, much less as a signal of changes to come. In comparison, 
2018 has the genuine makings of the start of a turned tide, not a temporary 
wave (though even if just a wave it was still impressive in its magnitude). In 
1992, the number of women in the entire General Assembly increased by only 
3, from 25 to 28. In 2018, that number increased by 12, from 51 to 63. The 
comparatively larger gains in 2018 (both in absolute and percentage terms) 
show that 2018 far outperformed 1992 even as a “wave” year for women. The 
survey data collected here suggests that this was not simply a wave, however.



Wave or Trend 71

The three variables noted throughout—recruitment, candidacy, and per-
sistent motivation—all receive support from the data developed and collected. 
Women in Pennsylvania had both the motive and the opportunity to achieve 
historic gains in their level of representation in the General Assembly, and 
they took advantage of both. Nor was this limited solely to the state capital—
Pennsylvania sent four women to the House of Representatives in Washington 
as part of what had been an all-male delegation. What remains to be seen 
is whether these gains will be held and expanded on. The combination of 
recruitment incentive, active pursuit of candidacy, incumbency advantage, 
and persistent motivation have the potential to bring women farther along 
the path to representational equality than Pennsylvanians have ever seen 
and many might never have expected, but ultimately this study is not about 
whether this outcome will ever be reached. It is about whether the pace at 
which that outcome could be reached has experienced a sustainable increase. 
The data herein suggest that it has.

NOTE

Acknowledgment: The author wishes to thank the candidates, elected officials, and 
political and party volunteers who took time during and after a busy election season to 
provide their invaluable insights and opinions. Any errors in the ensuing analysis are 
mine alone.

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Wave or Trend 73

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Joshua J. weikert is assistant professor of politics and chair of the Department of Civic 
Engagement at Immaculata University, as well as a senior policy advisor to Rep. Joseph 
Webster, Pennsylvania House of Representatives. His published research focuses on 
electoral behavior and political communication and he has published several op-eds on 
political campaigns and elections. Before joining the faculty at Immaculata he served as 
a visiting assistant professor and adjunct professor at Villanova University, West Chester 
University, Albright College, and Ursinus College.


	Structure Bookmarks
	Background: Getting to the Starting Gate
	The Party Decides
	Research Questions and Methodology
	Analysis
	Discussion
	Conclusion: Year(s) of the Woman
	NOTE
	REFERENCES


