How single women are becoming critical voters who could give Democrats an edge for years

America is more single than ever, and college-educated single women are fast becoming the dominant voting bloc in American politics.

Educated women and voters of color were primarily responsible for turning the ‘red wave’ into a red drip in the 2022 midterm elections in the wake of the controversial Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, who enshrined the federal right to abortion.

“It’s like waking up a sleeping giant,” Shah said of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Democrats spoke directly to [unmarried women]. They said the Republicans are trying to take away your autonomy.

In 2022, according to CNN exit polls, single women voted for Democratic House candidates more than two to one: 68 to 31 percent. Sixty percent of voters said they were currently married, according to the exit poll from the National Election Pool (NEP) network consortium.

Marital status was also a defining factor for men, but by much smaller margins: While married men leaned Republican by 20 percent, single men favored the GOP by seven percent.

Education levels are key in this voting bloc, as women now make up the majority of college graduates, a huge 59 percent. And women of color, as a group, returned to college in greater numbers than white women and men, in the 2020-21 school year. according to a recent report by the National Research Center of the Student Clearinghouse.

“The culture of college and post-college hookups, declining marriage rates among college-educated women, and a shortage of marriage-material men willing to commit are byproducts of unequal gender ratios and a huge shortage of college-educated men. ‘, explains economics writer Jon Birger in his book ‘Date-onomics’

Jennifer Lim, strategist and founder of Republican Women for Progress, said the Republican Party has understood its issues with women for more than a decade, but little has changed.

“Women, especially single women, are one of the most critical demographic groups the Republican Party must focus on in the upcoming presidential election and beyond if the party is to survive,” she told DailyMail.com. “Since at least 2012, the Republican Party officially understood that it needed to communicate more effectively with women, and little progress has been made since then.”

Without a “cohesive political platform” in a post-Roe world, Republicans “have little to offer this demographic,” Lim says.

In 2022, according to CNN exit polls, single women voted for Democratic House candidates more than two to one: 68 to 31 percent.

Women join the Women’s March in New York City

Ariel Hill-Davis, co-founder of GOP Women for Progress, said the Republican Party is too focused on “traditional family values” above all other issues to appeal to single women.

“I, like many single women, care about a variety of issues including the economy, regulation, manufacturing, reproductive health, and civil liberties. I shouldn’t have to choose whether I want access to birth control or lower taxes,” she said.

Like Hill-Davis, Shah said she believes many single women are showing signs of fiscal conservatism, but are turned off by the party’s stance on reproductive issues and Trump.

If they see Trump at the top of the ticket in 2025, Shah said, “it would be the nail in the coffin.”

In stark contrast, Karoline Leavitt, the Gen Z candidate who won the Republican primary for New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district but lost to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in the general election, believes her party should do the opposite: lean on in the culture wars and fight against a left that, according to her, intends to “break the family unit and weaken traditional gender roles”.

“As a single Gen Z woman, I see the constant cultural pressure on women my age to reject traditional, conservative female roles such as wife, mother, and homemaker, and embrace progressive and ‘feminist’ ideals, which it means hating masculine men, having abortions instead of babies and concentrating on a career instead of family,’ she told DailyMail.com.

Republican strategist Jim Dornan says, “If the Republicans keep pushing these extreme positions on abortion, we’ll never get those voters.”

“Women pay taxes like everyone else and at some point they will get tired of paying high tax rates, especially when they start making more money,” she added. “So if we can get the message across and get out of the cultural issues, then I think I think yes, we might eventually have an opportunity to bring them into our coalition. But until then, I don’t think there’s a sentence.

Concerns are growing about declining birth rates around the world: One in six women in the US now turns 45 without having children, up from 1 in 10 in 1990.

Those who don’t plan to have children see less reason to get married: The percentage of married households with no children has dropped from 37 percent in 1976 to 21 percent in 2022.

But many seem less likely to partner than in years past: A 2019 Pew Research study found that since 1960, single-person households in the United States have grown from 13 percent to 27 percent.

Meanwhile, these young and often single women are more ethnically diverse, less conventionally religious, and more educated than ever.

The kicker, he said, is trying to attract that point guard without shutting down the right wing of the game.

“Republicans need to be very careful how they message to try to appeal to this demographic because they don’t want to go too far and alienate their base.” Republican strategist John Feehery told DailyMail.com.