Republican Gap with Women Voters Begins with Minority Voters

The Republican Party, contrary to common punditry, does not have a problem attracting women voters. It has a problem attracting minority voters, both male and female. The aggregate of 9,000 plus interviews with registered voters in Gallup's 2012 tracking poll showed that 50% of white women favored Romney while only 41% preferred Obama. In the final 2012 exit polls, this margin increased to 12% as Romney carried 56% to Obama’s 44%. Married poll respondents favored Romney over Obama 54%--39%. If you are looking at a married, white, woman you are likely looking at a Romney voter.

Obama's electoral advantage in women was with unmarried and minority women. Conservative strategists who were looking to mitigate Obama's lead among women should have focused on minority women who were struggling under the failure of Democratic economic policies.

In 2008, single females went for Obama by a two to one margin, and when one reviews the data, it is not hard to understand why. Most single females make less than their married counterparts and many minority single females also have children and live in poverty or close to the poverty line.

Thirty-five percent of black families headed by single parents live in poverty compared to 7% of married black couples and 38% of Hispanic single female head of household live in poverty compared to 12% of married Hispanic couples. Living in a single parent home increases the chances of children living in poverty and receiving government assistance, thus, they are more likely to support big government programs and income transfers. But those programs have done nothing to help women and children rise out of poverty.

Marriage is a significant factor in poverty and as Heritage Foundation Researcher Robert Rector noted, “Marriage remains America’s strongest anti-poverty weapon. As husbands disappear from the home, poverty, and welfare dependence will increase. Children and parents will suffer as result.” Family structure plays a factor in combating poverty and the evidence shows that a decline in family formation plays a role in the number of minorities in poverty.

In 1930, only 6.3% children were born out of wedlock but today that number has risen to 40%. 36% of single parents live in poverty compared to 6.3% of married couples. Only one out of four families with children are poor when contrasted to nearly 71% of families headed by single parents, showing that family formation is a significant factor in poverty. While many blame teen pregnancy for an increase in single parents, three out of five unwed children are born to women 20-29. Education plays a significant role in unwed mothers as the least educated women are more likely to have children out of wedlock. 67% of women without high school degree have children without marriage, whereas mothers with college degrees or higher have an 8.3% chance of having children out of wedlock.

Education is a factor in whether a woman will have a child out of wedlock but regardless of education, married women are less likely to live in poverty. Only 15% of women who are married and without a high school diploma live in poverty, whereas 47% of single female head of household dropouts live in poverty. 31% of Single female head of households with high school diploma live in poverty compared to only 5% of married families and 24% of single female head of households with some college degree live in poverty compared to only 3.2% of married women. Nearly 9% of women with college degrees or higher live in poverty compared to 1.5% of married families with a college degree or higher. Something has obviously gone horribly wrong with family formation; the hardest hit are minority women and children. Obama's policies of the More & Same has only exacerbated the situation for women and children.

“The gag rule about marriage is nothing new," Rector writes in his Heritage Foundation report. "At the beginning of the War on Poverty, a young Daniel Patrick Moynihan (later Ambassador to the United Nations and Senator from New York), serving in the Administration of President Lyndon Johnson, wrote a seminal report on the negative effects of declining marriage among blacks. The Left exploded, excoriating Moynihan and insisting that the erosion of marriage was either unimportant or benign. ...Four decades later, Moynihan’s predictions have been vindicated. The erosion of marriage has spread to whites and Hispanics with devastating results. But the taboo on discussing the link between poverty and the disappearance of husbands remains as firm as it was four decades ago.”

Marriage is the key to eliminating poverty because it causes husbands to earn more for the family. As Kay Hymowitz pointed out, "Marriage itself, it seems, encourages male productivity. One study by Donna Ginther and Madeline Zavodny examined men who’d had “shotgun” marriages and thus probably hadn’t been planning to tie the knot. The shotgun husbands nevertheless earned more than their single peers did."

As long as family formation does not occur, the ability of policymakers to institute policies to raise minority families out of poverty may have limits. What is clear from the past 50 years is that the path away from poverty is not more government assistance, but jobs, economic growth and encouraging two parent families.

The question that remains is how much is being a single female, voting Democratic, dependent upon being a minority. The conservative campaign strategy of benign neglect toward minority voters is the source of the "women gap" for Republican candidates. Romney, after all, lead Obama in 2012 among white women and Trump continued this in 2016. Minority women are a significant factor in the Democratic lead among women in general and single women in particular.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried women voters 54% to 41% while Trump carried male voters 52% to 41%, but looking at the data closer, we found that minority women not only voted overwhelmingly for Hillary but they also voted more heavily for Hillary than minority males.

While Trump ran behind Romney among white women, he still carried white women 52% to 43%, while carrying white males by a wider margin 62% to 31%. 13% of black males voted Trump and 33% of Hispanic males voted for Trump compared to only 4% of black females and 25% of Hispanic women. If Trump had managed to capture similar numbers of minority females as he did males, he would have gathered an additional 2 million voters. Trump won college educated white males with 53%. 62% of non-college white educated women and 71% of non-college educated white males and only college educated white women voted for Hillary. (The majority of white college educated women did vote for Romney, so Republicans might want to hope this is a one election blip.) Trump did not perform as well with college educated whites but he did sweep non-college educated white women and males. As the data shows, the Republican gap with females begins with minority voters and it should be noted that black women make up 58% of overall black voters compared to 54% Hispanics voters being women and 52% of white voters being female. Black women make up a greater number of the overall black voters and this adds to the gap of women voters between Republicans and Democrats.

As previously mentioned, minorities played a significant factor in Republicans losing the overall women voters. Trump lost married women by 1 point, whereas Romney won married women by 7 points. Single women, many of them minorities, voted for Clinton by 31 points. Marriage by itself doesn’t make Republican candidates but married women tend to be more traditionalist in their views and those women in long term marriages more so. Marriage rates and divorce rates have both been in decline since 2000. The question is whether divorce and single motherhood could shift the prevailing economic agreement.

Marriage may be a result, not a cause of traditionalism, but it is worth exploring if divorce and single motherhood could shift the prevailing economic agreement toward more government interventionist. The following statistic should bring a somber reminder for conservatives and Republicans. Nearly a quarter of children live in single-mother households, increased from 11% in 1970, and fifty percent of children will spend some time of their youth living with a single mother. This is due to two factors: divorces of married couples and an increase in the number of children born outside of marriage.

Children of divorced parents and outside of marriage score lower on academic performance, well-being and self-esteem with children born outside of marriage scoring even lower than children of divorces. Single mothers are looking for solutions to their economic challenges and the party offering solutions and caring about their struggles will win their support. Democrats have targeted this group, and if it continues to grow, this could lean the voting population toward Democratic Socialists movements. One solution for Republicans and conservatives is to encourage family formation but this is something that is beyond government programs. A second solution could be a message of active law enforcement in their communities to provide safety and address the economic security of single mother households.

To close the gap Republican strategists need to recognize the demographic gap is not with women in general, but with minority women who have been hardest hit by failed Democrat policies.

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