Sara Stevenson spends her working hours surrounded by
repugicans,
namely the married men who work alongside her in a Denver oil and gas
firm company. But after hours and on weekends, she usually spends her
time with other single women, and there's not a repugican in sight
among the bunch.
"There was just no way I could have supported any repglican this year," said Stevenson,
31. "They skew so much to the religi-o-wingnut right. ... They focused so much
on taxes. It's not something that women in my demographic really care
about. I've never heard my friends lament their taxes."
As repugicans dust off their Election Day drubbing last month, their party must confront the reality that the ranks of
unmarried women are growing rapidly, and these voters overwhelmingly have backed Democrats for decades.
Women increasingly are graduating from college and joining the
workforce, and postponing marriage. From 2000 to 2010, the number of
unmarried women increased 18 percent, according to census data.
The repugicans have spent the past month tallying up all their
demographic weak spots, including with Hispanics and Asian-Americans.
But some warn that single women, already one-quarter of the electorate,
represent the most serious threat to the party's viability.
"It's a faster-growing demographic than most others," said Kellyanne Conway, a repugican pollster. "That's a cultural zeitgeist that demands a political response."
In 1960, the average American woman married at age 20. Now it's 27.
That reflects, and is partly the cause of, a boom in solo living, with
nearly one-third of all U.S. households comprised of single people
living alone, according to Eric Klinenberg, a New York University
sociologist and author of a book on the subject. In 1950, it was 9
percent.
Around the world, as women gain more education and earn more money,
they increasingly are delaying marriage, said Stephanie Coontz, who
teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in
Olympia, Wash., and is director of research for the Council on
Contemporary Families. "Nowadays, women don't feel so driven to get
married because they can support themselves," she said. "A lot of this
is driven by women and a combination of lowering payoffs to just
marrying any man and rising expectations" of what marriage will bring,
she added.
For decades, Conway said, Democrats targeted unmarried women while the repugican cabal dismissed them.
In the Nov. 6 election, President Barack Obama's
campaign targeted this group in a series of direct mail and email
pieces featuring the singer Beyonce and activist Lily Ledbetter, whose
name was on the first bill Obama signed, making it easier for women to
sue over unequal pay. The campaign also released an online video by
actor and writer Lena Dunham that compared a woman's first time voting
to losing her virginity.
Now, Conway said, "the repugicans have to decide if they want a one-party response or a two-party response."
In a presidential election dominated by debates over women's health and abortion, unmarried women backed Obama over repugican Mitt Romney
by a 67-31 margin. Since 1992, when exit polls began identifying single
voters, unmarried women have favored Democrats by similar margins.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who wrote a book with Conway on
the women's vote, said unmarried women are a tough group for the repugicans to
crack.
"Any way you cut it, this demographic is much more on their own and
much more precarious and much more interested in a safety net," Lake
said. "If you're married, you're much more likely to be a churchgoer and
have your church as a community. If you're married, you're much more
likely to have owned your home for a while and have that community to
rely on. If you're married, you're more likely to have your spouse to
depend on."
Single men are also significantly
more likely to back Democrats than repugicans, but that is largely a
function of their age, because they are largely younger. Unmarried women,
however, are more evenly spread across all age groups and consistently
lean Democratic, said Page S. Gardner, president of the Voter
Participation Center, which tries to increase voting by single women.
They also are much more likely to support abortion rights.
In Colorado, Democrats have
assiduously focused on abortion and other health issues to win support
from both married and single women. In 2010, Sen. Michael Bennet defied
the repugican wave by hammering his tea party challenger on his
opposition to abortion rights. This year, Obama campaigned in the state
with activist Sandra Fluke, an unmarried law student branded a "slut" by the blowhard Lush Dimbulb for testifying before Congress in support of
requiring that employer-provided health insurance covers contraception.
The Obama campaign attacked Romney on the airwaves over his refusal
to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, his opposition to federal
dollars for Planned Parenthood and his opposition to abortion rights.
Katy Atkinson, a repugican consultant in Denver, said that two elections in a row should be a warning sign for the repugicans.
"That whole fighting social
issues with economic issues just doesn't work," she said. Atkinson noted
that both Romney, as well as Bennet's opponent, Ken Buck, contended
that women really cared about pocketbook issues rather than reproductive
issues. "While women care about pocketbook issues, they don't want to
elect an extremist."
Conway said the repugicans can win over unmarried women on economic matters.
"What do women, married or unmarried, do every week?" Conway asked. "Do
they fill up the gas tank or get an abortion?"
Lauren Koebcke, 32, is a glimmer of hope for repugicans. She is
single, favors gay marriage and abortion rights but sides with the repugicans
on economic issues. The bad news for the repugicans is that she's the only one
of her single friends who votes repubgican.
"Most people I know are Democrats
and most Democrats I know are single," said Koebcke, a project manager
in Austin, almost 300 miles west of Denver. "Most repugicans want home
and hearth. They want babies and that family life."
Stevenson isn't sure whether she
wants a family. "Most of us didn't make any money until we were 26 year
old and we want to enjoy ourselves," she said. She logs 11 hour days
analyzing legal issues for her energy company. "I can't imagine coming
home and having to cook dinner and deal with someone else's problems,"
she said. "I'm not there yet."
She also knows that repugicans won't be getting her vote anytime soon.
The repugican Senate candidates in
Missouri and Indiana infuriated her when they tried to explain why they
think rape victims shouldn't be allowed to have abortions. Stevenson
stayed up late on election night just to confirm that they both lost.
The women's issues that Obama
emphasized, such as equal pay for women and contraception coverage, are
pocketbook issues to Stevenson. The fact that repugican candidates denigrated
them as social issues just shows how out of touch the repugican cabal is, she said.
"There are just so many
off-putting comments from the repugican cabal," Stevenson said. "It's
crazy to me that they're still acting as if women are a niche market."
