New Study Finds That When Black Women Run For Office They Crush It
A new report titled “Black Women in American Politics 2025,” found that not only has there been a steady increase in holding public office, but in 2025, Black women hit record highs in holding state legislative offices.
According to the study, released by Higher Heights Leadership Fund and the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, Black women have steadily increased their role in the political universe; serving in statewide offices, state legislatures and Congress over the last decade.
Where Black women have really shined is in down ballot races, which have shown to be the stepping stones to higher offices.
“The report found that at one point in 2025, 402 Black women were serving in state legislatures, up from 240 nearly a decade ago,” USA Today reports.
“It’s steady progress,” Chelsea Hill, an author of the report, told the newspaper.
From USA Today:
Since 2014, there’s been a 67% increase in the number of Black women in state legislatures, according to the report by Higher Heights, which works to expand Black women’s political power, and the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
State legislatures have long served as a path to Congress. In the more than 10 years since the first report, there’s been an acceleration of Black women “moving along the pipeline,’’ said Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights.
Kamala Harris, the first woman of African American descent to hold the vice presidency, also made some historic firsts, last year, with her run to White House. She recently announced that she wouldn’t be running for governor of California, but she didn’t rule out another run for the White House in 2028.
USA Today also noted that Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, both Democrats, “made history as the first two Black women to serve in the U.S. Senate at the same time.”
The study also found that in the 2024 general election, 63% of Black women congressional nominees won their contests, crushing the win rates of all female candidates at 49% and male candidates at 53% across all races and ethnicities.
“When Black women run, they do win,” Hill told USA Today. “They have high win rates. At the congressional level, Black women have higher win rates than their counterparts.’’
New Study Finds That When Black Women Run For Office They Crush It was originally published on cassiuslife.com
