One of our favorite things about our sisters at Higher Heights for America is that they release educational and research-based reports that show the power, and hurdles, that Black women face in electoral politics. This week in conjunction with The Brookings Institution, the Higher Heights Leadership Fund released their analysis on Black women's electoral strength through 2016.
Per the report:
The concentration of Black residents in a district is positively correlated with Black women’s electoral success through 2016, the basis of the dataset. Roughly two-thirds of Black women have been elected in majority-black districts (>50 percent).
Recent mayoral victories among 100 of the most populated cities and unsuspecting wins throughout various primaries this cycle show Black women are viable in districts in which Blacks are not the majority. Although a third of all Black congresswomen and female state legislators were elected in minority-Black districts, recent and past successes suggest Black women are creating more and different routes to elected office.
States with the highest percentages of Black residents offer viable opportunities for Black women to be elected statewide and in minority-Black districts as over 500 majority-Black constituencies picked a representative in 2016, yet only one-third of those seats were contested by Black women.
You can read the full report here.
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