Women Voters This Year and Beyond

By Alan Caruba

Men when in the company of other men have no hesitancy to admit they have no idea why women are so different in so many ways. 

Well, viva the difference, but one does have to wonder why so many women of the present era feel no need for a man as a husband or father.

In May, the Census Bureau released a report noting that more than six out of ten women who gave birth in their early 20s were unmarried. “Overall,” a Washington Post article reported, “36 percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried mothers in 2011, the year that the census analyzed from answered in the American Community Survey.” Among whites, it was 29 percent. Among blacks, it was 68 percent.

For the second year in a row, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40.7% of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried mothers. That is very bad news.

It is an enormous commitment when a man asks “Will you marry me?”, but are we in an era when the answer is “No, thanks” or “Why?” This is happening when women in general still earn less than men, encounter more problems borrowing for a car or a mortgage, and, if the Internet match-up services ads are true, are still are looking for Mr. Right. Their problem often is that he has done a Google search and learned she would involve a big investment. Many men choose to remain single these days or as the divorce rate indicates, to opt out of marriage.

None of this has anything to do with the 2014 midterm elections or the ones in 2016…or does it?

Well, yes it does. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, columnist Gerald F. Seib said “The gender gap is alive and well in American politics. Indeed, it may be the defining characteristic of our political system as next year’s midterm elections beckon.” 

“We are not talking here just about the well-established pattern in which women are more likely to vote Democratic and men Republican in presidential elections. That’s true, but it appears to be only the tip of a gender-gap iceberg.”  And here’s where it gets scary for conservatives of both sexes, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 52% of men want Congress under Republican control “while just 38% of women feel that way.”

The poll reported that 49% of women say they approve of the job (Obama) is doing; just 37% of men approve. In either case, the numbers are too high because he has done the worst job of any President of the modern era or earlier.

Seib reported that “women are more likely to give the President high grades on leadership qualities, overall competence, and improving America’s image abroad.” This is so absurd it defies any explanation. “College-educated women, in short, emerge as a core Obama constituency.”

That might not be the case in 2014 because The Hill reports that, based on a Dec 23 CNN/ORC poll, support for Obamacare is dropping rapidly and “The drop in support indicated could be particularly troubling for the Obama administration because almost all of it came from women, whose opposition rose from 54% to 60% in a month.”  The poll cited by Sieb indicates that Republican woman—more than 80%--dislike Obamacare.

The gender gap is well documented and in 2012 it was the largest in the history of Gallup’s polls—20 points—since the polls measuring it began in 1952.

One thing needs mentioning and that is the extraordinary Republican women. There’s Rep. Michelle Bachman, Sen. Susan Collins, and Gov. Jan Brewer, to name just a few in positions of political leadership and others like columnists Peggy Noonan. Michelle Malkin, and Ann Coulter. The list is much longer, but it tells me that the GOP is fortunate to have them.

Clearly, the Republican Party has to undertake a major effort to draw more women into the party and, right now, it is a divided party as the GOP establishment wage battle with the Tea Party Movement that challenges their control.

It must also strongly refute the Democratic Party's lie that the GOP has "a war on women." There is no such war.  

The GOP, however, need not look to the League of Women Voters for any support. Despite its claim to be non-partisan, it has for decades tilted in favor of the Democratic Party and liberal policies. The League is pro-abortion, favors environmentalism, and a greater role for government in all aspects of the lives of women and men.

Who knows? The 2014 and 2016 elections may signal a shift in the liberal views of women voters.  If so, that is bad news for the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party has to do a much better job of enlisting the support of American women.

© Alan Caruba, 2014