Women continue to be underrepresented in elected office at the national, state, and local levels, whether one compares their numbers with the population as a whole or to the qualified labor pool. Voter discrimination against women no longer explains women's underrepresentation in elected office; extensive research across multiple elections demonstrates that when women are candidates in congressional primaries, and run in general elections as challengers, incumbents, and open-seat contestants, they win at the same rate as men, when accounting for incumbency. No systematic analysis has determined whether these gender-neutral results hold in Minnesota's state legislative races. In this article, the authors report on a study that analyzed an original, comprehensive set of candidate-level data for Minnesota legislative campaigns since 1997 to determine whether gender affects electoral success in the state of Minnesota.

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