Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (Stanley Greenberg was Bill Clinton's pollster) has a report on the 2012 election emphasizing single women. Greenberg has long emphasized the marriage gap, just from a Democratic perspective:
Greenberg is double counting the gaps, while I present them as just the difference between Romney's percent among one group and his percent among another. But the message is similar. The marriage gap has been bigger than the gender gap for a half dozen consecutive elections (at least):
Greenberg writes:
President Obama won women by a 55 to 44 percent margin and lost men by a 45 to 52 percent margin, leaving an 18-point gender gap, up from 12 points in 2008. But this difference is dwarfed by the marriage gap—the margin between married and unmarried women. Married women supported the Republican candidate in 2012 by a comfortable six-point margin. It is Obama’s huge victory among unmarried women that delivered the women’s vote and with it, the White House. There is a 43-point difference in the margin between married women and unmarried women, a number which exceeds the gender gap by a factor of two.
This marriage gap is not new. Marital status has been driving how voters vote—and, whether they vote—for several election cycles. What is different about this cycle is that the Obama campaign was the first national campaign to recognize the importance of unmarried women and target advertising and messaging explicitly to these voters. This proved a smart investment.
In 2010, Democratic support among unmarried women dropped significantly, and Democrats lost the overall vote among women and the Congress. In 2012, Democratic support among unmarried women bounced back sharply.
The key for Obama in 2012, thus, was to agitate the fringiest element: single women who didn't bother to vote in the unglamorous 2010 election.
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Married women often die alone, because they tend to outlive their husbands. Do widows vote like married women or other unmarried women? I suspect the former.
"Single women." Code for black. Which explains why they didn't much vote in 2010 but came out in force in 2012.
"Married women often die alone, because they tend to outlive their husbands."
True, but they're also much more likely to have people to take care of them... and in a way when they're old they can feel like they live on through their descendants.
"Married to the state" is the key phrase. This is perhaps the only time period in human history in which unmarried women are able to exist en masse as a bloc in society - basically the male 'donkey work' of building houses, roads, tilling the fields, chopping wood etc has been successfully contracted out to an atomised cash society, leaving the phallus as an intermmitant and fleeing presence (if it exists at all)in the lives of huge cohorts of women. Perhaps the good ol' primal beast is only ever hinted at as a veiled presence in the lives of this cohort in the form of the man who reads the meter or delivers the milk (no pun intended).
Be that it as it may, with the all singing, all dancing, kumbaayah, rainbow allaince Democrat Party, the 'Bama boy himself is fetishized as membrum virile bearer - the new and perfected rainbow everyman, non-threatening and viewed only as achimera via the TV screen, and bringing well-received gifts of cash (but, of course, no 'portions' are ever demanded), to the great unpenetrated.
In retrospect, I suppose the War on Women meme was a big winner for Team Obama. Single women somewhat past their expiration date (older than 27) tend to be neurotic, unreasonable, and paranoid. It wouldn't take much to stir up their envy and hatred for a rich white man with a happy family life, totally devoid of psycho-drama.
Another thing going for Obama is that white single women are prone to fantasize about sex with black men in the way single male geeks fantasize about sex with extremely young Japanese gravure models. I say Republicans need to find a candidate for 2016 who looks like Yingluck Shinawatra, the Prime Minister of Thailand, and solidify the male vote.
Dying alone is going to be even less fun than we imagine. When up-and-coming vibrant America meets the budget constraint, expect a major shift away from the government supporting old white people, to giving free stuff to young immigrants. Unless people wake up soon.
I'm just stunned to watch the American people surrendering to all this.
Everyone dies alone.
@Anon at 12:26 - well said, sir.
And as the electoral success of the Democratic Party is enhanced by discouraging heterosexual marriage and making single womenhood ever more feasible and protected, look for major policy initiatives in these areas in the next two years.
This should all just turn out really well.
Getting all the Julias out to vote was important for the Democrats short term. Maximizing the number of Julias by retarding family formation and increasing divorce is a long term strategy that also seems to be underway.
How likely is it that support among unmarried women just "bounced back" from 2010 levels to 2008 levels? Really. Or was it just the equivalent of steroids in baseball -- cheating. Massively.
Black single women are not very dutiful. Somehow I'm supposed to believe that they showed up out of a sense of duty and civic mindedness? Or that a few of them voted like, five times each? Which is more likely?
Anon 12:26 and 12:33 nails it, and that leads to the new reality. Single women are not the fringe. THEY are the center. Weirdos are married people, with kids, who are White (Blacks are excepted from that). White men are the ultra-fringe, depicted regularly on TV, and movies (particularly) as either idiot doofuses needing the guidance of Women and Blacks, or evil "racists" or sadists, or a few hunky heroes, or GAY NOW! That's it.
If power consists of who you cannot criticize, then who is the center, the power? Its single women, particularly. But also Lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics. That's the power center right there.
[Most women would be happy to die alone if they get sex with Alphas. Recall, five minutes of Alpha beats five years of Beta.]
"Single women." Code for black. Which explains why they didn't much vote in 2010 but came out in force in 2012.
For God's sake man, don't give *my* representative (Jim Clyburn) any ideas.
IE: Would an "incompetent single woman" be a redundancy?
Ye cats!!!
Recall, five minutes of Alpha beats five years of Beta. --Whiskey
This explains why I get more of a kick from a single column by Pat Buchanan, Theodore Dalrymple, Peter Brimelow, or even Lucy Kellaway than from everything Whiskey has written, put together, since 2007. (Imagine Whiskey put together...)
"Single women." Code for black.
I know lots of single white women. They just don't have kids.
Which explains why they didn't much vote in 2010 but came out in force in 2012.
And by doing so, they just ratified the Obama Administration's belief that black men are a poor investment and should be replaced in the workforce by cheaper, better Mexicans.
I don't get the Whiskey hate. He sometimes crosses over into hyperbole, but he usually has valid points to add to the discussion.
Conservatives seem to want to only hear "sweet truths" about the state of the party and its future. Conservatives need a strong dose of reality or they will soon find themselves a permanent minority party in the USA.
Is the marriage gap due to mainly economic, social, or cultural reasons?
"I don't get the Whiskey hate. He sometimes crosses over into hyperbole, but he usually has valid points to add to the discussion."
Agreed. Like the court jester or sultan's eunuch of yore, Whiskey whispers unpleasant truths brought to us from Roissy's chateau.
International Jew said...
Dying alone is going to be even less fun than we imagine. When up-and-coming vibrant America meets the budget constraint, expect a major shift away from the government supporting old white people, to giving free stuff to young immigrants.
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Cost-benefit rationing is an inevitable feature of government run healthcare.
The kicker will be when the disparate impact philsophy that has given us the "Discipline Gap" is applied to the "Health Gap".
Considerable sacrifices will have to be made to equalize the racial disparities in various disease categories as well as overall life expectancy.
Pity the older white person on the waiting list for cancer surgery then...
'Everyone dies alone.'
Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietsche, Shopenhauer... Or was it Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven?
Gilbert P.
"How likely is it that support among unmarried women just "bounced back" from 2010 levels to 2008 levels?"
How likely is it that the Democrats just forgot to cheat in 2010?
I'm sure they did plenty of cheating in this election (though enough to win, I dunno), but I'm sure they always do. If anything, they should be able to afford more cheating in the off-year elections, when there isn't a presidential election to fund.
I wish you'd break this out by race and simply focus on white women. Frankly, its not really important that Hispanic women vote 25% or 30% for Republicans or that 99% of black single women vote Democrat as opposed to 95% of black men.
""Single women." Code for black. Which explains why they didn't much vote in 2010 but came out in force in 2012."
According to the Reuters exit poll:
For single, never married White women in the USA, Obama won 58-to-40.For married White women, Romney won 61-38.
Limiting the analysis to only those born after 1976 reveals there is no 'youth angle' to these numbers, either:
--Obama won aged 18-35 single, never-married White women 59-39
--Romney won age 18-35 married White women by 59-39.
60% of White female voters under 36 years old were married, according to the exit poll. 73% of voting White women age 36 or older were married.
If power consists of who you cannot criticize, then who is the center, the power? Its single women, particularly. But also Lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics. That's the power center right there.
Coming from whiskey, that's rich. What about the ONE group that no one can mention lest whiskey will storm in to derail the thread's comments? Ask Rick Sanchez which group has power.
Why is this guy even allowed to post?
I don't get the Whiskey hate. He sometimes crosses over into hyperbole, but he usually has valid points to add to the discussion.
Dude, the whiskey hate is due to the fact that a) whiskey keeps repeating the same stuff over and over despite evidence to the contrary, b) he ignores other commenters who legitimately question him, and c) he only wants to discuss the "sweet truths" of the Tribe.
Conservatives seem to want to only hear "sweet truths" about the state of the party and its future. Conservatives need a strong dose of reality or they will soon find themselves a permanent minority party in the USA.
I don't agree with this at all. This is the most depressing blog I read. EVERYONE ON THIS BLOG knows they are going to become a permanent minority and that's pretty much all we discuss. We eviscerate GOP leaders, voters and anyone else we see as supporting the immivasion and the multicult. The problem we have with whiskey is that when that criticism leads to people like Emanuel Celler, he is always there to tell us not to believe our eyes and instead to blame white women.
The so called conservatives who need a strong dose of reality are the ones on Red State, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh listeners, Sean Hannity listeners, Fox News viewers and Weekly Standard readers and countless other mainstream GOP sites.
"[Most women would be happy to die alone if they get sex with Alphas. Recall, five minutes of Alpha beats five years of Beta.]"
This was not true when I went to college (about a decade ago). It seemed that the hot women would most often be with guys of about 6-8 attractiveness, beta looking types. Typical dependable guys who wanted to settle down, was how it looked to me.
"Anon 12:26 and 12:33 nails it, and that leads to the new reality. Single women are not the fringe. THEY are the center. Weirdos are married people, with kids,"
as Christopher Titus nailed it:
'So it seems that because of every syndrome and disorder we've invented in the past twenty years, the Los Angeles Times stated that 63% of American families are now considered dysfunctional. My God! That means we're the majority. We're normal! It's the people who have the mommy, the daddy, the brother, the sister, the little white picket fence — those people are the freaks, man!"
"If power consists of who you cannot criticize, then who is the center, the power? Its single women, particularly. But also Lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics. That's the power center right there. "
then superpower to the pews, even the great alpha lord whiskey dare not use their name in his list!!
"I don't agree with this at all. This is the most depressing blog I read. EVERYONE ON THIS BLOG knows they are going to become a permanent minority and that's pretty much all we discuss. We eviscerate GOP leaders, voters and anyone else we see as supporting the immivasion and the multicult. The problem we have with whiskey is that when that criticism leads to people like Emanuel Celler, he is always there to tell us not to believe our eyes and instead to blame white women."
Agreed. And Whiskey also acts like his "blaming white women" shtick is something new and profound, when actually it has been around for awhile in mainstream conservative circles. After all, don't we all remember Bill Kristol saying white women were "the problem" on air a few years ago? Many mainstream conservatives and liberals alike repeat the bald-faced lie that white women are the primary reason and beneficiaries of affirmative action.
Anon 12:26:
Single women can and do support themselves well enough. The problem comes when they have kids, because supporting kids on a single salary, plus daycare while you're at work, only works if you make a pretty good salary. Single accountants, pediatricians, middle-management types, or engineers can do this, albeit while not having much of a life left over. Single waitresses, Starbucks cashiers, etc., just don't earn enough to afford it.
"Anonymous11/23/12 12:48 PM
Everyone dies alone."
That's true in the religious sense, on Judgement Day, you will not have a defense attorney to make excuses for you, but I don't think Steve is talking about the moment of death.
When someone says "he died alone" the implication is that he lived alone for a long time preceding his death.
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