House Republicans started the year in a precarious place. Democrats have been overperforming in special elections, even in places that should be competitive or lean our way. Congressional maps remain in flux in key states. Retirements keep trickling out. And the House majority is so thin that a few races could hand the speaker’s gavel back to the Democrats. This is not the time to hope for the best. This is the time to get serious about what works.
In an environment this volatile, our party needs a strategy that is grounded in data, not wishful thinking. That strategy already exists: recruit and invest in Republican women. This is not about identity politics or checking a box. It is about putting forward the candidates who have already proven they win more often, flip more seats, and make better use of every dollar spent.
That case came into focus after 2018 when Republicans lost 40 seats in the House and elected only one new GOP woman. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) warned of a “crisis level of Republican women in Congress,” and party leadership acknowledged the need to do more to recruit and support women candidates. Leadership doubled down, partnered with new organizations like ours, and began investing more intentionally in Republican women.
In the three cycles since, there have been 247 House races classified as “competitive” by The Cook Political Report. Republican women won 56 percent of their races compared with 49 percent for men — a sizable advantage that’s held true under different cycles with different maps and different national environments. In offensive races, where Republicans were trying to defeat a Democratic incumbent or capture a Democratic-held open seat, the contrast is even starker: women won 44 percent of those races, while men won just 18 percent. Put simply, when Republicans put women on the field in tough districts, they win more often.
As an investor, if one asset class returns 2.5 times better than another, you shift your portfolio. With finite resources, that efficiency gap is not a footnote — it’s an argument for reprioritizing how the party recruits and spends.
Republican women’s wins have already paid off for the majority Republicans are trying to keep. The GOP’s slim majority in the House exists today because of exceptional women like Reps. Jen Kiggans in Virginia, Young Kim in California, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Nicole Malliotakis in New York, Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma, Maria Salazar in Florida, Michelle Fischbach in Minnesota, and Monica De La Cruz in Texas. These women flipped Democratic seats and then did something that’s often even harder — they held them. Many moved their districts out of the battleground category altogether, freeing up resources for other competitive contests.
There’s another important part of the calculus in a Trump-era midterm. The White House has been very clear that it is not going to run a generic midterm playbook. They’re going to put President Donald Trump on the ballot in November and use his presence to fire up low-propensity voters who might otherwise stay home. That is a turnout strategy that Republicans can and should capitalize on. But turnout is only part of the equation.
The other is persuasion. You can turn out Trump voters, but you also need to win over a number of independents and suburban moderates. Those are the constituencies where Republican women have shown their strength. Over the last four cycles, GOP women overperformed the top of the ticket 61 percent of the time compared to only 55 percent for GOP men. This is how they flip those key swing seats. GOP women hold the base and add to it. They have stronger appeal to those essential voting blocs — messaging more effectively on key issues like affordability and health care in a way that blunts the Democrats’ “extremist” labels and connects with the voters who decide close races.
No part of this strategy requires the party to abandon its conservative principles. It means being unapologetically results-oriented. The numbers tell us that if you care about conservative policy, if you care about who holds the speaker’s gavel, you should care about recruiting and backing more Republican women. It is the more reliable path at a time when we cannot take anything for granted.
In practice, that means not simply backing the first well-connected person who files. It means picking up the phone and persuading an accomplished woman in her community who says, “Washington is crazy, why would I run?” that she’s exactly how we win. It means backing her in a primary, not leaving her on an island because someone else has a local title or a louder personality.
Republicans cannot control every variable heading into November. Special elections, unsettled maps, and retirements will continue to create headwinds. What we can control is who we put on the ballot in November. The data points to the same conclusion: if Republicans want to hold and grow our majority, we must recruit, back, and invest in more women candidates.
Danielle Barrow is the president and Meredith Allen Dellinger is the executive director of Winning For Women Action Fund, the first super PAC dedicated to electing Republican women to federal office
