Voting and the single woman: the raw demographic truth in American politics.(2008 II)(Hillary Rodham Clinton)

HILLARY CLINTON's relationship with male voters puts her in solidarity with every woman whose efforts to woo have ended in the unwelcome recognition "He's just not that into you." She is also unlikely to fare well with married women, who are reliably Republican voters. But that's no reason Hillary can't win the presidency. She will seek support from single female voters--and there are enough of them to deliver the White House.

White men abandoned the Democratic party long before Hillary came along to remind them of their sixth-grade hall monitor. Democrats haven't won more than 43 percent of the white-male vote in 30 years. Al Gore carried only 36 percent of white male voters, and John Kerry only 37 percent. If no women had voted on Election Day 2000, George Bush and Dick Cheney would have carried 43 states.

But women are not the monolithic bloc of feminist fantasy, and not all women voters are a sure bet for Democrats. John Kerry won the women's vote by 3 points, but lost white women by 11 points and married women without college degrees by 16 points. Since 1980, white women voters have supported Republican presidential candidates by an average of eight points (54 to 46).

Single female voters can expect to be the most popular girls this election season. A recent study by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg explains why. Greenberg looked at the marriage gap--that is, the margin of married voters to unmarried ones who favor a given candidate, party, or position--and found it to be a powerful predictor of voting behavior. The marriage gap is far larger than the much-discussed gender gap. In the 2006 congressional elections, the marriage gap was a huge 32 points, compared with a gender gap of just 9 points. Among women voters, the marriage gap was even larger--36 points. And the marriage gap seems to cut across traditional voting blocs. (In 2006 there was a 14-point marriage gap among black voters.)

What this means is that single women tend to vote like other single women, regardless of age, income, or education. And single women tend to vote Democratic. They constitute more than a quarter of the voting population, and they are "easily the largest segment of the Democratic base--bigger than Hispanics and African Americans combined," Greenberg writes.

The good news for Democrats is that marriage rates are on the decline. Greenberg points out in his study that, from 1960 to 2006, the unmarried voting-age population grew from 27 to 45 percent of the electorate. He explains, "Between the 2002 and 2006 elections, the growth rate of unmarried Americans was double that of married Americans. If this trend continues, the unmarried will be a majority of the population within 15 years." And now, for the first time ever, the number of married Americans aged 21-54 is dropping in absolute terms.

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