Abstract

Pull Over, NASCAR Dads

The author considers how the Democratic Party can cultivate single women voters. Single women under 65--those separated, widowed, divorced or never married--represent at least 24 percent of the voting-age population and a whopping 46 percent of voting-age women. According to an influential study by the Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, they tend to be progressive and to lean Democratic. Indeed, if the nation's 45 million single women voted at the same rate as married women--52 percent versus 68 percent--there would be 6 million more voters in the electorate, and Gore would be in the White House today. Party leaders like Ann Lewis, national chair of the DNC's Women's Vote Center, want the Democratic Party to cultivate single women and connect them with the polling booth; Page Gardner and Christina Desser have founded "Women's Voices. Women Vote" (www.wvwv.org), to reach out and register them. It's about time! [S]ingle women are a natural constituency for the Democratic Party: They tend to be pro-choice, anti-gun, socially liberal and supporters of "big government." But there are problems with the single-women idea. For one, this is not a coherent demographic. Then, too, single women are disproportionately young, mobile, struggling and/or very, very poor--all categories that are less likely to register, vote or want to vote. The trouble with going after single women, those fans of progressive change, is that one has to offer them something progressive. Pay equity, for example, comes in at the top of polls of women's concerns.