In between Trump’s disturbing comments about using the military for mass deportations and his increasingly corrupt cabinet picks, we’re continuing to watch the final vote totals trickle in and trends reveal themselves. 

We know that electorally, women do well when Democrats do well. While that obviously didn’t happen at the top of the ticket, there are several things to be thankful for around the table this week.

1 | Trump’s popular vote margin is down to 1.6 percent and still dropping, making it the tightest popular vote margin since 2000. It’s also now below 50 percent, meaning most Americans did not vote for him, and he does not have a popular mandate to do any of the extreme, cruel things he’s planning. 

2 | He had no Congressional coattails in swing states. But where VP Harris campaigned heavily, she lifted Democratic women. As we’ve already noted, women outperformed men in Rust Belt Senate races—with Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin winning while Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown lost—and hanging on in the West with Jacky Rosen. 

3 | The total number of Democratic women in Congress will increase and be more diverse.While the overall number of women in Congress will drop slightly, that decline is the result of fewer Republican women serving in House seats next year. The slight uptick in Democratic women also reflects more women of color serving in Congress next year, including the wins by Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester. Two Black women will serve simultaneously in the Senate for the first time next year. Until now, three women—Carol Moseley Braun, Kamala Harris, and Laphonza Butler—have served a combined total of 11 years in all of American history. 

4 | Women made gains in state legislative representation. Three states—Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico—will achieve gender parity, and there will be a record number of women legislators across the country. These three states will maintain Democratic majorities, though they failed to gain, or in some cases maintain, supermajorities. 

While we continue to process the VP’s loss, we are also aware that women over-performed down-ballot, and those results provide important learnings for us. Supporting women candidates has never been more important, and we have critical work to do ahead to rise up and resist in these next four years.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, we are grateful for all of you. Our WomenCount community stepped up to help us raise record amounts for women candidates, and we have big goals for 2025 and 2026. But our work requires resources:

Can you give $25 or more to help maintain and grow these successes for women, next year and beyond?