The election of Debbie Lesko to fill a vacancy in Arizona’s 8th congressional district will result in a record high for women’s representation in the U.S. Congress. Upon Lesko’s swearing in, 107 women will serve in the 115th Congress, including 78 Democrats and 29 Republicans. For the first time, women will hold 20% of all congressional seats; they will be 19.3% of all members of the House of Representatives and 23% of all members of the Senate. These data do not include the five women who currently serve as non-voting delegates in the House.
With the addition of Lesko, 84 women will serve as voting members of the House of Representatives, including 61 Democrats and 23 Republicans. This does not mark a record high for women’s representation in the House, as 84 women representatives served in both the 114th and 115th Congresses, prior to the death of Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY).
The data on women in Congress were compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics, a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Representative-elect Lesko is the second Republican woman elected to Congress from Arizona. The first, Representative Martha McSally, was elected in 2014. She is the 7th woman ever elected to the U.S. House from Arizona, a state that has yet to send a woman to the U.S. Senate, and will be the third woman member of Arizona’s current nine-member House delegation.