Few women Democratic challengers won. This session is trying to figure out why. There are about 25 people in the session, more women than men. Marc Laitin of Wired for Change will present data he’s gathered. Then the group will put forward cases and hypotheses so that Marc can adjust his statistical model. The aim is to figure out why women did so badly, because, as Jackie Bray says, the solution can’t be to run more men.

Marc’s data show there was definitely a skew against women challengers. But is this what always goes on? There’s some historical analysis that shows, surprisingly, that being a female has not worked against candidates. If so, then something was going on this year. This year women raised more money than man. But women did even worse in close elections.

The discussion is often arcane (to me) about political factors I’ve never heard of. Some I do understand: Was security the dominant issue in these issues? Did the National Repulican Congressional Committee target these races? Was the advertising especially negative? Were conservative Democratic women recruited? Were women with particular types of credentials recruited? How many had held office before? What do the campaigns say were the causes of their loss? Are there commonalities among the voters? Did women fare worse with independents? Is there any correlatio wit the Republican women who lost? Anything about the primary? Many many more factors are raised…

I ask if statistical analysis is the right way to go given the relatively small sample and the number of possible influences. Marc (who has an admirably warm and serious demeanor) answers that there’s plenty of qualitative work to do, and it’s undoubtedly being done, but statistical analysis may surface information otherwise hidden.

Jackie ends by saying that the women’s loss is a part of the story we need to be telling.

Fascinating. [Tags: rootscamp rootscampdc politics women democrats]

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