« Consolidation | Main | Mum's the Word » Barack Obama's Lonely Hearts Club12 Jun 2008 01:41 pm
This table from a Gallup article on Barack Obama winning women over but as has tended to be the case in recent cycles the marriage gap seems to be at least as big a story as the gender gap. As usual with this question, though, it's hard to say how much of the difference between single and married voters reflects the fact that singles are younger or racial differences in marriage rates. Comments (23)
The rally in the Married women data is interesting, but what's really interesting is how single women didn't shift all that much in comparison. Assuming this has everything to do with Obama clinching and Clinton endorsing, would you expect to see a larger movement among single women as well as married women? 
Robotic Ghost, Well, single women were Obama's base, not Hillary's. Presumably, most of those women were younger women, so fewer of that group would shift from Hillary to Obama because not that many of them were supporting McCain over Obama before Hillary dropped.
There is a real simple explanation to this. Unmarried people are still capable of believing in hope. Married people on the other hand, they know better.
The obvious explanation is that married people Love America and single people Hate Freedom.
(have to thank Samuel Chase for the best laugh all day) The most hopeful thing about this is that all the categories are shifting towards Obama.
These kinds of univariate stats are really useless for exactly the reasons Matt points out: you can't separate out other correlated factors. Furthermore, the whole idea of segmenting the electorate on demographic characteristics is completely bass ackward from a marketing perspective. Marketing 101 is to segment based on the product attributes that people are interested in, not their demographics. The real "swing" voters are people who haven't made up their mind and are open to voting for Obama. There may be more of them in particular demographic groups, but what _defines_ them is their persuadability. Furthermore, they may have more issue-interests in common with persuadables in other demographic categories than with people in their own demographic. For instance, it could be that most of the people who haven't made up their mind are trying to decide who would be better on the economy. In that case you focus on that issue. The fact that many of these people are married women is mostly beside the point. Getting distracted by "soccer mom" micro-pandering won't move the dial when what people are really concerned about is something else. Matt would be raising the level of discourse if he ignored this demographic polling garbage.
There's one married demographic that Obama is almost certainly carrying in a big way. Betcha men married to men and women married to women favor Obama.
There's one married demographic that Obama is almost certainly carrying in a big way. Betcha men married to men and women married to women favor Obama.
There is a real simple explanation to this. Unmarried people are still capable of believing in hope. Married people on the other hand, they know better. A British comedian responded to the American phenomenon of the Promise Keepers as follows: "If you're going to wear a ring that tells the whole world you're not having sex, you can get married like the rest of us."
The only grouped that changed between those polls were married women. That seems to be entirely an effect of Hillary leaving the race and endorsing Obama.
You also need to point out that unmarried people are less likely to be religiously observant than married people.
I don't know what the poll's margin of error is, but shouldn't the percentages of the married men match that of the married women? (This assumes, of course, that polygamy and same-sex marriages are a very small percentage of the respondents.)
nevermind previous comment, brain fart
For the last time, it's not a marriage gap. It's an age gap.
"as has tended to be the case in recent cycles the marriage gap seems to be at least as big a story as the gender gap." No, the marriage gap is always a bigger story, quantitatively, than the gender gap. The gender gap gets more press due to feminist ideology, but the marriage gap is The Big One. For example, white women in Utah lead the nation by being married an average of 17.0 years during those 27 years from age 18 through 44. In contrast, in liberal Washington D.C., the average white woman is married only 7.4 years. In Massachusetts, where Bush won merely 37 percent, years married average just 12.2. Applied to white women, this new measure proved to be the single-best predictor imaginable of Bush’s share of the vote by state in the last two elections. Bush carried the top 25 states, while Kerry won 16 of the lowest 19. The 2004 correlation coefficient was a stratospheric 0.91, accounting for an astonishing r-squared equal to 83 percent of total variation in voting by state. This has to be one of the highest correlations for an unexpected factor ever seen in political science. http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/article.html
It's a marriage gap. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg’s multiple regression analysis of the 2004 exit polls revealed: "The marriage gap is one of the most important cleavages in electoral politics. This is true even when controlling for other demographic and behavioral factors such as gender, age, race, gun ownership, union household membership, party identification, education, income, and church attendance. Controlling for all these other variables, the odds of voting for Kerry were 1.56 times greater if the voter was unmarried than if the voter was married. In contrast, once other demographic and behavioral factors were controlled for, a voter’s gender had no significant effect on their likelihood to vote for the Democrat."
The Democrats appeal more to status-striving single people, the Stuff White People Like set, while the Republicans appeal more to the core of any society, married people.
It's quite simple. When one is married, they depend on their spouse. When one is unmarried, they depend on big government. The married folks who divorce feel the need to count on gov't again and go right back to being liberal.
If the key determinant in this case was marital status, then married men and married women would not have diverged like that. So, I am going with Tim K's explanation (try not to have a heart attack, Tim): I think this is the effect of Clinton going from opposing Obama to supporting him. As in fact Gallup's analysis also makes clear. In another chart for women over 50, Obama went from a 43-46 deficit to a 47-41 advantage. Again, that is likely a Clinton effect, not a marriage effect.
Obama is winning among white single women in DC.
Count me in as a freedom loving married woman. McCain '08!
Betcha men married to men and women married to women favor Obama. No, they supported Clinton in the primaries and now need to vote for McCain in order to protest the nomination of Obama.
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Heads in the Sand
McCain's numbers are falling like a turd from a tall moose.
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Posted by Grand Moff Texan | June 12, 2008 1:56 PM