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US Politics
Unmarried Women Vote for Change, Kerry
Women's Voices. Women Vote
Executive Summary
In 2004, unmarried women were overwhelmingly looking for change, and
they turned out this election cycle to bring it about. In a year
characterized by strong voter
turnout, exit polls show unmarried women constituted 22-23 percent of
the 2004 electorate, an increase from the 19 percent reported by the
exit polls in the 2000 election.
This represents the single largest increase in share of the electorate
among any demographic group. This is an important shift in the American
electorate, even though
unmarried women remain the largest demographic group underrepresented
at the polls.
This year, Women’s Voices, Women Vote reached out for the first time to
this segment of the population because of its under representation at
the polls. In order to increase the numbers of unmarried women who
register and vote, they worked to find
unmarried women, and, in a nonpartisan fashion, talked to them about
the issues that they
care most about, in particular economic issues. These efforts were met
with success, as
roughly 7.5 million more unmarried women voters turned out to vote than
they did in 2000.
Methodology
This is a post-election analysis based on the following sources:
- National Election Pool’s exit poll, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky,
November 2004. The National Election Pool’s Exit polls interviewed
3,062 unmarried women nationally.
- Democracy Corps survey of 2,000 voters, 410 of which were
unmarried women. The Democracy Corps survey was conducted November 2nd
and 3rd and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.
- Women’s Voices. Women Vote - 16 State Survey, conducted by
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, November 2-4, 2004. This survey interviewed
1,067 unmarried women ages 18-64 living in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana,
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada,
Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington,
and Wisconsin.
Key Findings
- Exit polls also show that Kerry won unmarried white women by 11 points (55% to 44%).
- Unmarried women based their vote for President on two issues: Iraq and the economy.
- Few “security moms" among unmarried women - 58% wanted to hear about health care and the economy, vs. 35% about security.
"In 2004, this group of voters turned out for change. Yet, as we saw in
the exit polls and in the post-election research, the key issues of the
campaigns did not completely address the central concerns of this group
of women."
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