The GOP's Problem With Unmarried Women

Given the GOP's war on women in general, it is little surprise that Ken Cuccinelli lost the women vote by at least 9 points.  The big surprise was, however, that he lost the vote of unmarried women by 42 points.  Yes, 42 points.  This loss makes Mitt Romney's deficit with these women voters look good in comparison.  Apparently, Cuccinelli's obsession with regulating women's private parts - when he wasn't obsessing about gay sex - came back to bite him in the ass big time.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's growing problem with unmarried woman voters.  Here are excerpts:

The real problem for Republicans going forward is not women broadly but single women in particular. Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe spent most of his campaign time — and money — casting Ken Cuccinelli as a zealot on social issues like abortion and contraception in the just-concluded Virginia race.

[A]ccording to exit polls, Cuccinelli only lost female voters by nine points — identical to the losing margin for Mitt Romney among women in Virginia in the 2012 presidential election. (Romney lost women nationally by 11 points to President Obama in 2012.)

Where Cuccinelli did get swamped, however, was among non-married women where he lost by a massive 42-point(!) margin, according to preliminary exit polling. While Romney didn’t fare that poorly in 2012, his 29-point loss among non-married women in Virginia was more than double his losing margin among women more broadly in the Commonwealth.

Here’s the two-pronged problem for Republicans: 1) They aren’t winning married women by nearly enough to make up for their huge deficits among unmarried women and 2) There aren’t that many more married women than single women in the electorate to make up the margins.

(Worth noting: The married/unmarried divide isn’t just among women.  Cuccinelli won married men by six points but lost single men by 25.)

But, it’s clear from the Virginia data — as well as the 2012 presidential results — that Republicans must find a way to lose single women by a far less wide margin if they want to close a gender gap that it making it increasingly difficult for them to be a majority party nationally in presidential elections.

More reseach will need to be done, but perhaps the unmarried men and women are younger and, therefore, less accepting of Cuccinelli's - and the GOP's - religious extremism and regressive approach to social issues.