She Persisted: Gender, Electoral Loss, and the Decision to Run Again

Losing elections is a political reality for most candidates. While much fanfare was made of the historic number of women who won in 2018, three times as many women ran and lost. And although we know much about the reasons that motivate women to run in the first, far less is known about the decision-making processes of women who lose and run again. How do women who were once motivated rebound for another campaign and election? We address this question, working with a unique, exploratory data set of interviews with women who ran for Congress in 2018 and lost. Our analysis offers some important insights on how women who rebound think about their loss, and their decision-making processes. We find compelling evidence that women’s paths to office continue to differ from men’s, reminding us of the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all model for candidate emergence or reemergence. We conclude with the foundation of a gendered theory of electoral persistence.