page_title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
section_title: General election
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / 2018 campaign / General election
caption_attribution_description: English: Kerri Evelyn Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
context_page_description: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known by her initials as AOC, is an American politician and activist. She became the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district in 2019. This includes the eastern part of the Bronx and parts of north-central Queens in New York City. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
  Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic Party's primary election on June 26, 2018 when she Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley. Her victory was a surprise and many saw it as an upset victory. In November 2018, she would go on to win the general election. She beat Republican nominee Anthony Pappas.
  At age 29, she became the youngest woman to become a member of the United States Congress. She is well known for her use of social media. She studied international relations and economics at Boston University. An activist, she worked for Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign. She also worked part-time as a waitress and bartender before running for Congress in 2018.
  Ocasio-Cortez is one of the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to Congress.
context_section_description: Ocasio-Cortez ran against Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas is an economics professor at St. John's University. Ocasio-Cortez was supported by many progressive organizations and politicians, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. 
  Joe Crowley stayed on the ballot, as the nominee of the Working Families Party (WFP) and the Women’s Equality Party (WEP). Neither Crowley nor the WFP party campaigned in the election. Both supported Ocasio-Cortez after her Democratic primary victory. Ocasio-Cortez said that the WEP, which Governor Andrew Cuomo created, was a centrist group that supported male politicians over female politicians like her and Cynthia Nixon. Nixon ran against Governor Cuomo in the primary for New York Governor.  Former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman wanted Crowley to campaign on the WFP ballot to beat Ocasio-Cortez. Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the WFP, asked voters not to vote for Crowley if his name was on the general election ballot.
  Ocasio-Cortez won the election with 78% of the vote (110,318) to Pappas' 14% (17,762). Crowley, on the WFP and WEP ballots, won (6.6%) 9,348 votes. Her election was part of a larger wave of Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections. The party won control of the United States House of Representatives.
caption: Ocasio-Cortez with a supporter in September 2018
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