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Women in the Senate
Sep. 26th, 2012 07:36 pmIt occurred to me, the other day, to track the number of women in the U.S. Senate over time, and I came up with some possibly interesting numbers.
The last time the number of women in the Senate decreased was the election of 1978, when two appointed female senators were defeated for re-election, and Nancy Kassebaum was elected from Kansas. Kassebaum was the only woman in the Senate, after that. Since then, there have been a number of elections resulting in no change, and a number resulting in increase - most notably the elections of 1992, when four women were newly elected to the Senate (Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley Braun, and Patty Murray), and 2000, when the number went up by three (Hillary Clinton, Debbie Stabenow, Maria Cantwell); as of today, there are 17 women in the Senate.
Earlier this year, it looked as though that streak would be broken, with two women (Kay Hutchison and Olympia Snowe) retiring and a third (Claire McCaskill, a Democrat in an increasingly Republican state) seriously threatened. Hutchison's successor will surely be a man - both major-party candidates are male - and Snowe will probably be followed by a man as well. (The Democratic candidate, Cynthia Dill, trails her two opponents badly.)
Things have changed since then, and it looks like the number will hold or go up again. I'm going to use Nate Silver's probabilities as of today to compute the "expected value" of the net change in the coming elections, listing all major candidates who are of different gender from the incumbent.
Male -> Female:
Connecticut: Linda McMahon, 25%
Hawaii: Maizie Hirono 95%, Linda Lingle 5% (This one's a sure pickup!)
Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren 66%
Nebraska: Deb Fischer 73%
Nevada: Shelley Berkley 51%
New Mexico: Heather Wilson 8%
North Dakota: Heidi Heitkamp 21%
Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin 70%
Female -> Male:
Maine: Angus King 86%, Charlie Summers 10%
Michigan: Peter Hoekstra 2%
Minnesota: Kurt Bills 0% (Well, he's the GOP candidate, but Amy Klobuchar is very popular.)
Missouri: Todd Akin 26%
Texas: Ted Cruz 96%, Paul Sadler 4% (A sure loss.)
Washington: Michael Baumgartner 1%
If you net these all out, adding up the probabilities (+ for M->F, - for F->M), you get an expected change of +1.89. If you just count the number of gender-changing candidates with a better-than-even chance of winning, you get +3 (Hirono, Warren, Fischer, Berkley, and Baldwin joining the Senate, with Hutchison and Snowe departing).
I just felt like doing those computations.
The last time the number of women in the Senate decreased was the election of 1978, when two appointed female senators were defeated for re-election, and Nancy Kassebaum was elected from Kansas. Kassebaum was the only woman in the Senate, after that. Since then, there have been a number of elections resulting in no change, and a number resulting in increase - most notably the elections of 1992, when four women were newly elected to the Senate (Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley Braun, and Patty Murray), and 2000, when the number went up by three (Hillary Clinton, Debbie Stabenow, Maria Cantwell); as of today, there are 17 women in the Senate.
Earlier this year, it looked as though that streak would be broken, with two women (Kay Hutchison and Olympia Snowe) retiring and a third (Claire McCaskill, a Democrat in an increasingly Republican state) seriously threatened. Hutchison's successor will surely be a man - both major-party candidates are male - and Snowe will probably be followed by a man as well. (The Democratic candidate, Cynthia Dill, trails her two opponents badly.)
Things have changed since then, and it looks like the number will hold or go up again. I'm going to use Nate Silver's probabilities as of today to compute the "expected value" of the net change in the coming elections, listing all major candidates who are of different gender from the incumbent.
Male -> Female:
Connecticut: Linda McMahon, 25%
Hawaii: Maizie Hirono 95%, Linda Lingle 5% (This one's a sure pickup!)
Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren 66%
Nebraska: Deb Fischer 73%
Nevada: Shelley Berkley 51%
New Mexico: Heather Wilson 8%
North Dakota: Heidi Heitkamp 21%
Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin 70%
Female -> Male:
Maine: Angus King 86%, Charlie Summers 10%
Michigan: Peter Hoekstra 2%
Minnesota: Kurt Bills 0% (Well, he's the GOP candidate, but Amy Klobuchar is very popular.)
Missouri: Todd Akin 26%
Texas: Ted Cruz 96%, Paul Sadler 4% (A sure loss.)
Washington: Michael Baumgartner 1%
If you net these all out, adding up the probabilities (+ for M->F, - for F->M), you get an expected change of +1.89. If you just count the number of gender-changing candidates with a better-than-even chance of winning, you get +3 (Hirono, Warren, Fischer, Berkley, and Baldwin joining the Senate, with Hutchison and Snowe departing).
I just felt like doing those computations.
