Last week, Washington discovered unmarried women. As pollsters who have been studying this group of voters for years, we say: Welcome to the party. Admittedly, it’s an unusual way to slice the American electorate. After all, it’s not like widows, divorcées and single women in their 20s think of themselves as a group, as a unique voting bloc or even call themselves “unmarried women.” They are more likely to call themselves “working women.”
But marital status is one of the strongest predictors of whether a person will vote and for which party, which is why so many progressives and Democrats are paying attention now.
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And in our latest poll done for NPR – conducted jointly by Democracy Corps and Resurgent Republic – the Democrats were ahead by 1 point in the generic congressional ballot (44 to 43 percent), but unmarried women gave Democrats 58 percent of their votes. That sounds high, but it is nearly 10 points below what we would see in a presidential-year election, suggesting that Democrats have some work to do.
So, if you are a Democrat and want to change your electoral fortunes in November, unmarried women are the biggest and best opportunity. Right now, these are votes on the table—pity the Democrat who would leave them there in November.