Single Women Emerge as Political Powerhouse (or, why the Hobby Lobby decision matters)

[wyldwolf]

The decline of marriage over the last generation has helped create an emerging voting bloc of unmarried women who are profoundly reshaping the American electorate to the advantage, recent elections suggest, of the Democratic Party. What is far from clear is whether Democrats will benefit in the midterm contests this fall.

Half of all adult women over the age of 18 are unmarried — 56 million, up from 45 million in 2000 — and now account for one in four people of voting age. (Adult Hispanics eligible to vote, a group that gets more attention, number 25 million this year.) Single women have become Democrats’ most reliable supporters, behind African-Americans: In 2012, two-thirds of single women who voted supported President Obama. Among married women, a slim majority supported Mitt Romney.

“You have a group that’s growing in size, and becoming more politically concentrated in terms of the Democrats,” said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.

The challenge for Democrats is that many single women do not vote, especially in nonpresidential election years like this one. While voting declines across all groups in midterm contests for Congress and lower offices, the drop-off is steepest for unmarried females and minorities. The result is a turnout that is older, whiter and more conservative than in presidential years.

In an attempt to alter that picture, and to try to prevent Republicans from capturing a Senate majority in November, Democrats and allied groups say they are wooing single women — young and old, highly educated and working class, never married and divorced or widowed — with unmatched ardor. They have seized on this week’s ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, five men, that family-owned corporations do not have to provide birth control in their insurance coverage, to add to their arguments that the Democrats, not the Republicans, represent the interests of women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us/single-women-midterm-elections.html

[villager]

1. If they actually emerge all the way into the voting booth this time, then good

Otherwise, we'll remain captive to the usual suspects...

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. The half of women who are unmarried are also about half elderly widows.

To say that they have a unified view of the world is misleading.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 80 years old is approaching elderly, she gave a most powerful dissent to

this decision.

Being elderly doesn't mean one would or could support this violation of the 1st Amendment.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

8. And my 81 year old mother was also outraged about it....

....but her 84 year old sister? Thinks it's great....anything to save the fetuses and stop wimminfolk from sleepin' round....

All the poster said was....the opinions are divergent.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Opinions are divergent on every subject under the sun, but the gist of the OP and

accompanying graphs on the link clearly show that

1. 70% of unmarried women vote Democratic.

2. Regarding the makeup of eligible voters; the unmarried women category is climbing and already surpassing that of unmarried men and approaching that of married men and women.

3. Regarding the makeup of the electorate; unmarried women are climbing as are unmarried men to a lesser degree, while the married men and women segment is declining.

While nothing is 100%, unmarried women are gaining power in the electorate, already primarily vote Democratic and this decision by the SC will only serve to intensify and speedup that dynamic.

[MillennialDem]

4. Can you give a cite on this? Given the sheer number of millennials I doubt this is true

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. .

http://family.jrank.org/pages/1753/Widowhood-Demography-Widowed.html

This link says that in 2000, there were 11 million widows in the country.

The OP's link indicates that in 2000, there were 45 million unmarried women. So in 2000 the ratio was 1:3 widows vs divorced or never married women.

Since elderly women are the fastest growing demographic, I surmise that my estimate of half is close, but It could be as low as one-third.

[MillennialDem]

6. Fastest growing demographic but still a tiny demographic... I somehow doubt we've gone

from 11 million widows to 28 million widows in 12 years.

Also your math is off, 11 million out of 45 million means 1 out of every four unmarried women is a widow.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. One-in-four is "a ratio of 3:1", no?

"Tiny"? YMMV, but 23 million women 65 and over doesn't meet my definition of tiny. There are only 21 million women aged 20-30.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Ages

I think it's safe to say the ratio of divorcees (or never married) to widows is somewhere between 2:1 and 1:1, but it's not an argument which merits digging any deeper.

[MillennialDem]

10. Yeah but 65+ is a 25-30 year age range as opposed to the 20-30 10 year range

It's still quite small.

Now compare it to the 18-45 year old range or something like that range and see the difference...

[BootinUp]

9. We need a hero to represent/champion them. nt