The depressing 2016 election discouraged women from running for office

October 10, 2017

Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the highest office in the land may have ended in defeat, but the silver lining of that electoral college loss was that she managed to inspire many women to run for office themselves. According to Cosmopolitan, Emily’s List, a group that helps elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, reported in August that more than 16,000 women had expressed interest in running for office since Donald Trump won in November.

That’s not the end of it, though: It turns out the election also inspired women not to run. Cosmopolitan teamed up with SurveyMonkey for a poll that revealed 18% of young women said the election made them less likely to run, while 16% said the election made them more likely to run. Guess all those chants of “lock her up,” Trump’s unsettling debate behavior, and suggestions that “the Second Amendment people” could do something to limit Clinton’s chances of being elected somehow turned women off of the idea of running for office. Weird, right?

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