← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · skemper
Thread ID: 14840 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-08-27
2004-08-27 19:45 | User Profile
Interesting article. A tidbit I found interesting: Single men vote nearly as overwhelmingly Democratic as single women. Could it be that nonwhite men and wiggers vote Democratic because they want the government to support the children they beget in the world ?
[url]http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/election/20040826004304.shtml[/url]
Want to know which candidate a woman is likely to support for president?
Look at her ring finger.
It may sound like the start of a bad joke, but the fact is most married women say theyââ¬â¢ll vote for President Bush. By nearly 2-to-1, unmarried women say they support John Kerry.
[B]The "marriage gap"-- the difference in the vote between married and unmarried women -- is an astonishing 38 percentage points, according to aggregated USA Today/CNN/Gallup Polls. In contrast, the famous "gender gap," the difference in the vote between men and women, is just 11 points. [/B] Ginny Savopoulos thinks she understands why the gap exists.
"I registered Republican when I got married," she says as she walks through Rodney Square in the center of town here. That reflected her husbandââ¬â¢s political bent and her own sense of economic security. "After I was divorced, I was thinking more about, ââ¬ËWhatââ¬â¢s out there for me as a single woman?ââ¬â¢ "
During Bushââ¬â¢s tenure, she struggled to find comparable work as a paralegal after she was laid off in 2002, and sheââ¬â¢s been dismayed by the costs of the Iraq war. She is still registered as a Republican, but she plans to vote for Kerry.
Analysts say the marriage gap is grounded in the different daily lives and cultural outlooks that many married and unmarried women have. Eighty-four years after women won the right to vote -- the 19th Amendment was passed on this day in 1920 -- that electoral divide is shaping important battlegrounds for both sides:
Republicans are targeting married women who work outside the home as critical voters. They reliably vote but sometimes support Democrats, sometimes Republicans. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd calls them a key "persuadable group." Married women who donââ¬â¢t work outside the home are solidly Republican -- a "turnout group."
The presidentââ¬â¢s support for more "flex-time" arrangements is designed to appeal to married women in the workplace, who often feel less pressure for extra pay than they do for extra time with their families. Laura Bushââ¬â¢s speech at the Republican National Convention next Tuesday anchors an evening schedule aimed at female voters.
And the campaign last month launched a "W Stands for Women" Web site that pitches George W. Bush on issues such as education; 50,000 supporters have signed up.
Democrats for the first time are making a concerted effort to persuade single women, most of whom work, to register and go to the polls. The overwhelming majority of never-married, divorced and widowed women already support Kerry, but they have been one of the demographic groups least likely to vote. In 2000, 22 million unmarried women who were eligible to vote didnââ¬â¢t do so.
Kerryââ¬â¢s pledge to protect jobs and expand health-care coverage strikes a chord with many single women. The Democratic National Committee announces a program today called "Take Five" that asks loyalists to persuade five unmarried women who arenââ¬â¢t regular voters to go to the polls. A nonpartisan group called 1,000 Flowers is organizing voter-registration appeals to single women at beauty salons in eight battleground states.
"You can make some difference in turnout among single women -- 1 percent, 2 percent, 5 percent," says Mark Mellman, a pollster and adviser for Kerry. "That may not seem like much, but in a close election it could make all the difference in the world."
Two views of the world
Why do married and unmarried women tend to see the political world so differently?
For one thing, conservative women are more likely to be married, though of course many liberal women are married, too. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says unmarried women as a group start out as more liberal-leaning than married women. And they are often hard-pressed economically.
Most unmarried women -- 54 percent -- have annual household incomes below $30,000, according to the Census; thatââ¬â¢s twice the percentage of married women with incomes that low. Most married women -- 51 percent -- have household incomes of $50,000 and above; thatââ¬â¢s double the number of single women with income that high.
That makes single women more anxious than their married friends about bread-and-butter issues, less confident of having health coverage and more likely to take an expansive view of what the government can and should do to maintain safety-net programs.
Having children seems to intensify views on both sides. Married women with children are even more Republican that those who donââ¬â¢t have children; single women who have children are even more Democratic than those who donââ¬â¢t.
"Money-wise, itââ¬â¢s very hard, especially as a single parent," says Evelyn Ocasio, 34, a widow who supports four children with her job as a receptionist.
"I worry every day, seeing if I can save some money for my retirement, but I really canââ¬â¢t because I have to think about my kids," she says.
She supports Kerry but isnââ¬â¢t sure whether sheââ¬â¢ll find time to vote.
Married women, who often have the security of two paychecks in a household, are more likely to cite Bushââ¬â¢s leadership against terrorism as a compelling reason to support him.
The suburban women dubbed "soccer moms" in 2000 have been renamed "security moms" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
One of the TV ads the Bush campaign is airing is aimed straight at them: "I canââ¬â¢t imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th," the president says.
"Safety, thatââ¬â¢s No. 1," says Donna Stranahan, 39, who is married and has two children. She and a friend, Kathy Garrett, are on their way back to work after lunch.
"I feel like living in the world today, you have to constantly be looking over your shoulder," agrees Garrett, 46, who is married.
Sheââ¬â¢s enrolled her 10-year-old daughter in a karate class to help ensure she can handle herself.
She is registered as a Democrat but plans to vote for Bush.
"He had the gumption and the nerve to not just sit there and keep getting hit in the face" after 9/11, she says. Garrett faults President Clinton for not doing enough against terrorism and worries Kerry "seems to say whatever everybody wants to hear." Bush "isnââ¬â¢t afraid to react," she says.
Too big to miss
The marriage gap isnââ¬â¢t new. In 1984, the difference in the presidential votes of married and unmarried women was 17 percentage points, according to surveys taken as voters left polling places. There was a 21-point marriage gap in 1992, a 29-point gap in 1996, a 32-point gap in 2000.
But the marriage gap didnââ¬â¢t seem to get much attention until the hairââ¬â¢s-breadth results in 2000 intensified the scrutiny of slices of the electorate and fueled more aggressive efforts to get out the vote -- "micro-targeting," itââ¬â¢s called in the trade. The divide also has become more powerful as the number of single people has grown and the difference in voting patterns has increased.
"Thereââ¬â¢s been a seismic shift in the demographics of our country," Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg says. In 1950, one-third of women ages 15 and older were unmarried; now nearly half are. (There are 62.1 million married women, 52.5 million unmarried ones). [B]Thereââ¬â¢s a "marriage gap" among men, too. Married men support Bush, 56 percent to 39 percent, the USA TODAY Poll shows. Unmarried men support Kerry by almost the same margin, 55 percent to 40 percent. [/B] But single women have received more attention from strategists because there are more of them -- nearly 47 million eligible to vote, compared with 38.4 million men -- and because women often settle on a candidate later and are less firmly set on their choice.
Page Gardner, a Democratic consultant in Washington, was intrigued by the "marriage gap" after 2000. Last year, with a friend in San Francisco, she formed a nonpartisan group called Womenââ¬â¢s Voices Women Vote that has financed research into why many unmarried women donââ¬â¢t vote. While 68 percent of married women voted in 2000, just 52 percent of unmarried women did. The conclusion: Single women often felt their voices werenââ¬â¢t heard and didnââ¬â¢t count.
The group has combined Census, voting rolls and consumer data to generate lists of nearly 20 million single women in 12 battleground states. Nonpartisan groups can borrow the lists to register voters; partisan groups can rent it to target them.
Itââ¬â¢s possible that single women could be to Democrats what evangelical Christians have become to Republicans: A huge group of people who often havenââ¬â¢t been engaged in politics before but hold many views in sync with the party. Efforts to organize evangelicals by the Christian Coalition and other organizations over the past quarter-century have made them a key part of the Republican base.
One difference: Evangelical Christians are organized through their churches into networks that make it easier to identify and reach them. Single women arenââ¬â¢t.
In Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., retired labor lobbyist Ann Hoffman greets five volunteers who show up in a borrowed office for an after-hours phone bank co-sponsored by Womenââ¬â¢s Voices Women Vote and the USAction Education Fund.
She gets off to a slow start.
2004-08-28 00:48 | User Profile
skemper,
You are most Right! I have tryed to make this point before. Women without husbands want the government to take care of them. You are also most likley right about Single men. Liberal men are often sex pervert who treat women like dirt, Bill Clinton is a good example.
[QUOTE]Interesting article. A tidbit I found interesting: Single men vote nearly as overwhelmingly Democratic as single women. Could it be that nonwhite men and wiggers vote Democratic because they want the government to support the children they beget in the world ? [/QUOTE]
2004-08-28 13:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]skemper,
You are most Right! I have tryed to make this point before. Women without husbands want the government to take care of them. You are also most likley right about Single men. Liberal men are often sex perverts who treat women like dirt, Bill Clinton is a good example.[/QUOTE]
Faust,
I just wonder if the gap between single and married men will widen also in the coming years because of cultural brainwashing and unfair divorce settlements and will cause more single and divorced men to look to the government for support of the families they beget. It is strange that while many straight men are opting out of marriage that homos are pushing for marriage with their own kind.
I agree with you that there are more liberal single liberal women because welfare benefits create a new breadwinner for them. Before welfare, single women with kids looked to their families for support, and thus they were less liberal-leaning before 1984.
2004-08-28 15:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=skemper]Interesting article. A tidbit I found interesting: Single men vote nearly as overwhelmingly Democratic as single women. Could it be that nonwhite men and wiggers vote Democratic because they want the government to support the children they beget in the world ? [/QUOTE] Kevin MacDonald has a lengthy commentary on this phenomena in the last chapter of Culture of Critique. (which Frederick William I still has in his signature)
Another critical component of the evolutionary basis of individualism is the elaboration of the human affectional system as an individualistic pair-bonding system, the system that seemed so strange that it was theorized to be a thin veneer overlaying a deep psychopathology to a generation of Jewish intellectuals emerging from the ghetto (Cuddihy 1974, 71). This system is individualistic in the sense that it is based not on external, group-based social controls or familial dictate but, rather, on the intrinsically motivated role of romantic love in cementing reproductive relationships (see pp. 136--139). The issue is important because Western cultures are typically characterized as relatively individualistic compared to other societies (Triandis 1995), and there is reason to suppose that the affectional system is conceptually linked to individualism; that is, it is a system that tends toward nuclear rather than extended family organization. Triandis (1990) finds that individualistic societies emphasize romantic love to a greater extent than do collectivist societies, and Western cultures have indeed emphasized romantic love more than other cultures (see PTSDA, 236-245; MacDonald 1995b,c; Money 1980).
This system is highly elaborated in Western cultures in both men and women, and it is psychometrically linked with empathy, altruism, and nurturance. Individuals who are very high on this system--predominantly females--are pathologically prone to altruistic, nurturant and dependent behavior (see MacDonald 1995a). On an evolutionary account, the relatively greater elaboration of this system in females is to be expected, given the greater female role in nurturance and as a discriminating mechanism in relationships of pair bonding. Such a perspective also accounts for the much-commented-on gender gap in political behavior in which females are more prone to voting for political candidates favoring liberal positions on social issues. Women more than men also endorse political stances that equalize rather than accentuate differences between individuals and groups (Pratto, Stallworth & Sidanius 1997).
In ancestral environments this system was highly adaptive, resulting in a tendency toward pair bonding and high-investment parenting, as well as intrinsically motivated relationships of close friendship and trust. This system continues to be adaptive in the modern world in its role in underlying high-investment parenting, but it is easy to see that the relative hypertrophy of this system may result in maladaptive behavior if a system designed for empathy, altruism, and nurturance of family members and others in a closely related group becomes directed to the world outside the family. The implication is that Western societies are subject to invasion by non-Western cultures able to manipulate Western tendencies toward reciprocity, egalitarianism, and close affectional relationships in a manner that results in maladaptive behavior for the European-derived peoples who remain at the core of all Western societies
2004-08-28 22:43 | User Profile
"Grinding poverty in America? Bad and getting worse, unsurprisingly. A friend of mine expressed the current crisis most lucidly, telling me that she was at an age where she expected her friends would be married homeowners with children, but instead sheââ¬â¢s come to find that the trend is that they live in rented apartments supporting bastard children. This trend isnââ¬â¢t bound to change anytime soon, what with the 'jobless recovery,' and the looming realization that a military draft is all but certain in the next few years, to support wars sold on the most fraudulent and specious grounds."
--Anthony Gancarski, [url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/gancarski/gancarski10.html]Is Oââ¬â¢Reilly a Factor?[/url]
2004-08-29 01:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE]This system is highly elaborated in Western cultures in both men and women, and it is psychometrically linked with empathy, altruism, and nurturance. Individuals who are very high on this system--predominantly females--are pathologically prone to altruistic, nurturant and dependent behavior (see MacDonald 1995a). On an evolutionary account, the relatively greater elaboration of this system in females is to be expected, given the greater female role in nurturance and as a discriminating mechanism in relationships of pair bonding. Such a perspective also accounts for the much-commented-on gender gap in political behavior in which females are more prone to voting for political candidates favoring liberal positions on social issues. Women more than men also endorse political stances that equalize rather than accentuate differences between individuals and groups (Pratto, Stallworth & Sidanius 1997). [/QUOTE]
Okie, This is interesting. I need to read Critique. This explains the behavior of liberal white women and wiggars very well. Blacks because of their lower IQ's had to be dependent on the white man, and wiggars, learning from blacks, are taking up the same role in exploiting the state as the provider for themselves and their children, and thus voting for candidates that will support this system.