Getting it right has power to impact the vote and turnout
Unmarried women made up a quarter of the electorate in 2012 and gave two thirds of their votes to President Obama. However, even as the fiscal choices made by Congress have significant impact on their personal economies, these voters are vulnerable to non-voting in off-year elections. When we asked last March whether the national political debates were addressing the issues most important to them, 60 percent of unmarried women said, “no,” and did so with real intensity. As we learned in 2010, these voters are critical to Democrats’ fortunes, but they are unlikely to vote, and less likely to give Democrats big margins, if Democrats are not laser focused on the issues that matter most to them.
To get at these issues, Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund began conducting extensive research on what motivates these voters to turn out and what motivates them to vote for Democrats. When we first started this project, we learned that unmarried women were most energized and moved to vote for Democrats by a set of policies that addressed pocketbook economic issues. Since then, we have been talking to women all around the country to hone this agenda and develop strategic messages around these policies. This week we will be releasing results from a new national survey on the women’s economic agenda. There are several critical new findings from this survey, which should serve to focus the work of leaders dedicated to advancing these policies.
