Virginia election’s marriage disparity

Published 7:44 pm Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Everyone’s trying to read the tea leaves in Virginia, but few are delving deeply enough into the data to see the real lesson. It would be true, indeed, that Republican Ken Cuccinelli lost the women’s vote and thus the gubernatorial election — if there was a “women’s vote.”

What the data shows is there’s no such thing. Instead, there are women who vote. Some are married, and some are single. Among the married women, Cuccinelli did well. Among the single women? Not so much.

According to exit polls, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the “women’s vote” by about 9 percentage points: 51 to 42 percent. But those numbers were reversed for married women. Cuccinelli won 51 to 42 percent.

It’s the astonishing gulf between married women and single women that determined the election. Single women went for McAuliffe 67 to 25 percent — a margin of 42 percentage points.

This isn’t a new problem for Republicans. Single women helped re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012.

“The decline of marriage is far more than just a political problem for Republicans,” columnist Mona Charen pointed out last year. “Unless reversed, it may represent the unraveling of our civilization. But it is also a political problem. The Democrats’ message to single women is simple: We will give you free stuff. Free birth control. Free medical care. Welfare payments for your children if you are poor. Food stamps. The whole welfare state package.”

Charen made probably the most astute political observation of any made in the aftermath of the 2012 election: “Women want security above all.”

And as the institution of marriage continues to decline, women naturally look to other institutions for security.

“Women in strong marriages tend to have their basic needs cared for by their own family unit and the civil society closest to them,” writes Molly Hemingway for The Federalist. “Women who are not in strong marriages tend to rely on the government. Voting patterns reflect how women’s incentives change with changes in their marital status. We should never forget Julia, President Obama’s central character in the ‘War on Women’ campaign. She lived ‘her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people’s money rather than her own initiative or hard work,’ as David Harsanyi wrote. And she never married.”

Failure to marry has significant economic consequences for women (and their children). That’s not a values statement; it’s statistics.

“The University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project came out with a fascinating report (‘When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America by Brad Wilcox’) showing that marriage in America is becoming something of an elite institution, reserved for older individuals,” Hemingway notes. “Wealthy white people are getting married and having strong marriages. Other folks less so. Far less so. Delayed marriage has both costs and benefits. It’s worked out well for elite women and helped them have more career advancement. But the failure to marry has had some serious destabilizing effects on non-elite women.”

The governor’s race in Virginia is really about a widening gap between married and unmarried women.