For the first time in history, a woman running for the presidency of the United States is leading in the polls.

However, the polls don’t tell the whole story. With its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Iowa plays an important role in selecting presidential candidates, and it could be one of the toughest states for Hillary Clinton to win, as Iowa is one of only two states that have never had a woman elected to Congress or to a governor’s office.

The rarity of female politicians is surprising, given that women today are more likely to vote than men. According to the Center for American Women in Politics, women have voted in higher numbers in every presidential election since 1980, most recently with about 8.8 million more women voters in the 2004 election.

Mack Shelley, university professor of political science and statistics, said that now roughly 10 million more women are registered to vote in the United States than men.

“More than half the electorate in Iowa is female,” Shelley said.

Shelley said if women voted based on similar gender, women would win all elections they ran in.

However, statistics show that this is not what happens.

The CAWP reported that only 16 seats in the Senate and 87 in the House are held by women. This is 16.3 percent of the total seats in Congress.

“Does gender matter? Yeah, it does. Does it matter more than everything else? No,” Shelly said. “When it comes to purely demographics, race matters more than gender. Women vote for better candidates, not necessarily for the woman candidate.”

Shelley said gender mattered little compared to other demographics such as race, education and income to the electorate.

He said Iowa has little experience with women in high office and although it’s easy for the electorate to say a woman could fix all the current political problems, a woman could potentially screw things up just as much as a man.

“Gender-specific stereotypes are hard to break out of,” Shelley said. “No gender is any better.”

Dianne Bystrom, director of the Catt Center for Women and Politics, agreed that there were other more important factors when electors determined candidates.

“States that do a better job electing women to Congress are more urban,” Bystrom said.

She also attributed Iowa’s aging populations as a barrier for female candidates.

Bystrom said even though Iowa ranks with Mississippi with the fewest women in Congress, Iowa has a better “political culture” than Mississippi.

Iowa’s political culture, Bystrom said, is reflected in the number of women serving in the Iowa state Legislature.

“There are 34 in the state Legislature. This is the highest in history,” Bystrom said.

Mississippi currently has 22 women in its state Legislature, according to the CWAP.

Bystrom said one of the problems is the lack of women running for political office. Political parties have not done a good job in recruiting women to run for office at any level, she said.

“Research shows women, opposed to men, have to be asked to or encouraged to run for office,” Bystrom said.

She said the Catt Center provides a program called “Ready to Run” for women interested in running for office. The program runs in June and has two tracks, one for women who have announced their candidacy, and one for women who are thinking of running. Bystrom said last summer, 75 women took the course.

“States that have these types of organizations have had successes getting women to run,” Bystrom said.

Bystrom said there have been times when a Democratic woman ran against a Republican male incumbent and lost, such as in 2006 when Democrat Joyce Schulte ran against Republican Steve King in Iowa’s heavily-Republican fifth district, a heavily Republican district. She said Schulte would have done better in an open-seat race and a Republican woman should have run.

“They have been really, really good candidates but we need to be more strategic and run them in open-seat elections,” Bystrom said. “Best scenario is you have a Republican woman running against a Democratic woman.”

Bystrom also mentioned a gender gap within political parties.

“There used to be a parity between Democratic and Republican women in office, now we are seeing more Democratic women in office,” Bystrom said.