Hillary and Single Women

One of my goals with this blog is to address the misinterpretation of data, so I apologize for this tangent into polling data.
One of the themes coming out of the New Hampshire primary is Hillary Clinton’s base support among single women. I can already see three Maureen Dowd columns coming. The problem is that it’s partially correct and not the whole story.
Going by yesterday’s exit poll, Senator Clinton’s support is really with all women, especially older women and very especially, older white women. That’s where the gap really opens up. Younger men simply don’t vote for her. Put it this way, more than two-thirds of Hillary’s support came from women. Hillary’s win wasn’t based on the power of the Sex and the City/Hear me Roar crowd, it was the power of the granny vote. And that’s a powerful voting bloc. I think a reasonable estimate is that one in four Hillary votes came from a grandmother.
In the Democratic primary, the median age of voters is close to 50 and there were over 30% more women participating. Women are older, they vote more and they like Hillary. Among voters over 65, Hillary creamed Obama, 48% to 32%. Plus, Hillary had a 12-point lead among women. Still, even though Obama ost the women’s vote badly, a majority of his votes were also from women. That’s how large the gender disparity is. Combine the age and gender effect and you can see how Hillary pulled it off.
The voting gap between single and married people was relatively small. Hillary won both, singles 40% to 39%, and married 38% to 33%.
It’s true that single women were stronger Hillary supporters than married women (51% of single women were for here compared with 45% of married women), but not as much as the gap that single men were for Obama over married men (50% of single men supported him compared with 34% of married men). Both gender’s singles were simply more in favor of their gender’s choice.
But here’s the point being missed. A portion of “single women” must also include widows. The presence of so many older women voters must make that group somewhat large. As you can see in the data, pollsters use the phrase “unmarried” not “never married.”
The pollsters also compare “mothers” with “women with no children.” Again, this can be misinterpreted. The category is mothers with children under 18. A women without children is often a women with adult children. Probably 20% of the voters were women over the age of 55. I think a fair amount would fall into the category of “women with no children.”
Of course, if there were more grandmothers working in the media, and fewer single women, the story coming out of New Hampshire might be a little different.

Posted by on January 9th, 2008 at 12:10 pm


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.