
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 13, 2006
/ 13 Adar, 5766
Politics, marriage, and women's votes
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
One of the myths that Kate O'Beirne skewers in "Women Who Make the World Worse," her shrewd and refreshing new
book on the modern women's movement, is the myth of the gender gap the potent edge that Democrats are supposed to
have over Republicans when it comes to attracting women's votes.
For decades, writes O'Beirne, feminists have been brandishing the gender gap as if it were a political weapon they could
deploy at will. Eleanor Smeal, a former president of the National Organization for Women, published a triumphant book in
1984 titled "Why and How Women Will Elect the Next President." But on Election Day that November, Democrat Walter
Mondale was flattened by Ronald Reagan's 49-state landslide, notwithstanding Mondale's historic choice of a female running
mate, New York congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. Reagan won 62 percent of the male vote and 56 percent of the female
vote a six-point gender gap, but probably not what Smeal had in mind.
In fact, of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans have won five three times getting more women's votes than the
Democrats. For all the rhetoric about the mighty gender gap Democratic strategist Ann Lewis once called it "the Grand
Canyon of American politics" Republicans seem to bridge it with little difficulty.
And that, as O'Beirne emphasizes, is because women aren't monolithic voters and don't march in lockstep to the beat of a
liberal drummer. The best evidence of that is the electoral gap that really does matter in American politics the gap
separating married women from those who are single.
Unlike the gender gap, there is nothing illusory about the marriage gap. Married women are more likely to vote Republican;
unmarried women are more likely to vote Democratic. In the most recent presidential election, unmarried women voted for
John Kerry by a 25-point margin, while President Bush won the votes of married women by an 11-point margin: a marriage
gap of 36 points.
"Want to know which candidate a woman is likely to support for president?" asked USA Today in 2004, as the
presidential race was heading into the home stretch. "Look at her ring finger."
According to a 2005 analysis of the Kerry-Bush race by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a prominent Democratic
polling firm, "the marriage gap is a defining dynamic in today's politics, eclipsing the gender gap." Even after controlling for
numerous other factors age, race, income, gun ownership, union membership, education, church attendance, and even party
identification Greenberg found that married voters were significantly more apt to vote Republican than unmarried voters
were.
Why? What is it about wedlock that makes women more Republican or about the absence of wedlock that makes them
more Democratic? Here are three hypotheses:
Financial protection. Single women, especially if they have children, are more likely to be dependent on the government
for welfare, Social Security, and other economic benefits. A majority of unmarried women, 54 percent, have household
incomes below $30,000, double the percentage of married women with incomes that low. With greater reason to be anxious
about economic security, single women tend to support a more active and paternalistic role for government the traditional
Democratic view. Married women, by contrast, are much less likely to depend on government support. Instead, many come to
see the welfare state and its tax burden as a threat to the well-being of their family, making them more inclined to vote
Republican.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.).
|
|
Children and cultural values. Married parents with children are less likely to support the party whose policies make it
harder to shield their children from corrosive cultural influences. "Kerry did not have a single message that resonated with
married parents," the scholar Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote after the 2004 election. "He opposed the right to parental
notification for minors' abortions, condoned partial-birth abortion, and said not a single word about television's graphic
depictions of sex, violence, [and] murder." Democratic leaders, too, often seem bemused by the kind of Americans who "put
religious bumper-stickers on their cars and struggle to 'work on their marriage' while keeping their kids away from sex, drugs,
and alcohol, as well as the lesser lures of body piercings, tattoos, gangsta clothes, and other pop fashion."
Male influence. Women are significantly less likely than men to follow national and international affairs, a knowledge gap
that researchers have documented for decades. In a new survey conducted for Women's Voices, Women Vote by the
Greenberg polling firm, a large majority of nonvoting single women 70 percent said they "find politics and elections so
complicated that it is hard to understand what is really going on." That helps explain why single women are much less likely to
vote. It also explains why married women more often adopt their husband's political outlook which tends to be more
conservative than the other way around.
Of course there are many voters who don't fit these patterns, and other explanations for the marriage gap. But this much
seems clear: Democrats gain when women stay single, Republicans benefit when they marry. Marriage may be good for
society as a whole. But only the GOP has a political incentive to say so.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|