America is more single than ever before, and unmarried college-educated women are quickly becoming the dominant voting bloc in U.S. politics.
Educated women and voters of color were primarily responsible for turning the ‘red wave’ into a red trickle in the 2022 midterm elections in the wake of the Supreme Court‘s controversial decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade which enshrined a federal right to abortion.
‘It’s like waking up a sleeping giant,’ Shah said of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. ‘The Democrats spoke directly to [unmarried women]. They said the Republicans are trying to take away your autonomy.’
In 2022, according to CNN exit polls, unmarried women voted for Democratic House candidates more than two-to-one – 68 to 31 percent. Sixty percent of voters said they were currently married, per the National Election Pool network consortium (NEP) exit poll.
Marital status was a defining factor for men too, but by much smaller margins – while married men broke for Republicans by 20 percent, unmarried men favored the GOP by seven percent.
Educated women and voters of color were primarily responsible for turning the ‘red wave’ into a red trickle in the 2022 midterm elections in the wake of the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade
Education levels are key in this voting bloc as women are now the majority of college graduates – a whopping 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 Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
‘The college and post-college hookup culture, the decline in marriage rates among college-educated women, and the dearth of marriage-material men willing to commit, are all byproducts of lopsided gender ratios and a massive undersupply of college-educated men,’ economics writer Jon Birger explains in his book ‘Date-onomics’
Jennifer Lim, strategist and founder of Republican Women for Progress, said the GOP has understood its problems resonating with women for over a decade, but little has changed.
‘Women, most notably single women, are one of the most critical demographics the GOP must be focused on in the next presidential election and beyond if the party is to survive,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘Since at least 2012, the GOP has officially understood it needed to communicate more effectively with women, and since then it has made little progress.’
Without a ‘cohesive policy platform’ in a post-Roe world, Republicans ‘have little to offer this demographic’ Lim says.
In 2022, according to CNN exit polls, unmarried women voted for Democratic House candidates more than two-to-one – 68 to 31 percent
Women join the Woman’s March in New York City
Ariel Hill-Davis, co-founder of GOP Women for Progress, said that the Republican Party is too focused on ‘traditional family values’ over all other issues to appeal to single women.
‘I, like many unmarried women, care about a variety of issues including the economy, regulation, manufacturing, reproductive healthcare, 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 unmarried women show 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 a GOP primary for New Hampshire’s first congressional district but lost to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in the general election, believes her party should do the opposite – lean into the culture wars and fight back against a left that she says is intent on ‘breaking up the family unit and weakening traditional gender roles.’
‘As an unmarried, Generation 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, ‘feminist’ ideals, which means hating masculine men, having abortions instead of babies, and focusing on a career instead of family,’ she told DailyMail.com.
Dornan says, ‘if Republicans continue to insist on these extreme positions on abortion he’s never we’re never gonna get those voters.’
‘Women pay taxes just like everybody else, and at some point, they’re gonna get sick and tired of paying high tax rates, especially as they begin to make more money,’ he added. ‘And so if we can get the message out and get off of the cultural issues, then I think that I think that yeah, we could eventually have a have a shot at bringing them into our coalition. But until then, I don’t think there’s a prayer.’
Concerns are growing about the decline of birthrates across the globe – one in six women in the U.S. now turn 45 without ever having children, up from 1 in 10 in 1990.
Those who don’t plan to have children are seeing less of a reason to marry – the percentage of married households with no kids has declined from 37 percent in 1976 to 21 percent in 2022.
But many seem less likely to partner at all than they have been 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 unattached women are more ethnically diverse, less conventionally religious and more educated than ever before.
The kicker, he said, is trying to draw in such a base without turning off the right wing of the party.
‘Republicans have to be mighty careful on how they message to try to attract this demographic because they don’t want to go too far and alienate their base.’ GOP strategist John Feehery told DailyMail.com.