Nate Silver informs us today that although there aren't very many women in Congress, the women we do have are more likely to come from male-dominated congressional districts.  The effect is most pronounced in strongly Democratic districts (blue line), but it's there in Republican and neutral districts too.

Why?  Who knows.  It seems unlikely that a fairly small difference in male:female population ratio would actually be noticeable by the residents of a district, but Nate says the effect is pretty robust.  In other words, it's probably not a fluke.  So what's the answer?  Some underlying variable that drives both things?  Are women less likely to vote for a woman than men are?  (Maybe some kind of analysis of exit poll results would help here.)  Leave your guesses suggestions for further research in comments.

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Kevin Drum

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Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. RSS | Twitter