CLOSE THE GAP:

The voting gender gap narrows (Steve Sailer, 11/20/03, UPI)

Data extricated from the collapse of the lone national exit poll in the 2002 congressional elections show that the gap between how men and women vote declined to the narrowest difference since before the 1994 House elections.

A United Press International analysis of the results of election night surveys of 17,872 voters shows that much of the GOP's 5-percentage-point improvement in the House voting last year came from its increased appeal to women.

Republican candidates' share of the male vote grew from 54 percent in 2000 to 55 percent last November. Their fraction of the female vote, however, rose from 45 percent to 50 percent. This was the first time in several decades that at least half of women's votes went to GOP House candidates. [...]

The media has tended to view the GOP's difficulties attracting women's votes as a larger problem than the Democrats' equivalent struggles winning men's votes, although under the Constitution, both sexes' ballots are counted equally.

The enormous amount of publicity the gender gap has received is probably due in part to it being widest among the well-educated -- the people most likely to write and read articles about politics.

In reality, though, the celebrated gender gap is dwarfed by the seldom-mentioned disparity within each sex between the married and the unmarried. In 2002, 56 percent of married women voted for the GOP (similar to their husbands' 58 percent) compared to 39 percent of unmarried women (and 44 percent of unmarried men). There's an exceptionally large partisan difference between married women with children (58 percent Republican) and unmarried women with children (32 percent).

One hesitates to give intellectuals credit for too much intelligence, but it can hardly be a coincidence that single people--women and mothers in particular--depend for their sense of economic security on the State and that the Left has mounted a sustained assault against marriage and families. Atomization of society feeds statism.

But the GOP can steal a march on them if it uses private accounts to create a social welfare net that provides security but does so largely by relying on individuals to fund it themselves. Coupled with some restoration of traditional family structures it might be possible to start to undo some of the damage that the 19th Amendment has caused.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2003 10:50 AM