January 25th, 2012
Pollsters conducting dial groups during the State of the Union address report that the President scored with his promises to push middle class priorities and values. His plans to help the long term unemployed, to keep student loan rates low and to turn community colleges into“community career centers” all drew positive reviews and past polling [...]
January 24th, 2012
Right now, many Americans who make up the fastest-growing demographic groups and the majority of eligible voters in our country are not registered or planning to vote this November. The disengagement of the unmarried women, people of color and young people who make up this Rising American Electorate (RAE) is bad news for our democracy. [...]
January 15th, 2012
Unmarried women, people of color and young people under thirty – The Rising American Electorate – now make up the majority of the U.S. population – 53 percent. But they are not registered to vote and do not turnout to vote in numbers anywhere near their majority status. Now a new report from the New [...]
December 19th, 2011
A new poll from The Voter Participation Center’s sister organization – the Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) and Democracy Corps shows incumbents in 60 Republican-held districts badly out of touch with the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These voters—unmarried women, African Americans and Hispanics voters and youth—account for a majority of the nation’s voting eligible [...]
December 7th, 2011
Demographics will help define America’s political destiny — at least for the next decade. A new Rising American Electorate (RAE) made up of fast-growing numbers of unmarried women, people of color and young voters under 30 are now the majority (52.8 percent) of the voting eligible population. It was this new majority that pushed President Obama [...]
November 10th, 2011
One year out from the 2012 election and new quantitative and qualitative research makes it very clear – next year will be very different from 2008, when Democrats captured the White House, gained seven U.S. Senate seats and the majority, and expanded their control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, key progressive supporters are [...]
November 2nd, 2011
The topline news out of Gallup’s analysis of the 2012 Republican electorate is that it looks very similar to the 2008 GOP electorate – still tilted toward men (53 percent), overwhelmingly white (86.7 percent) and conservative (68 percent) and married (62 percent compared to 53 percent of the overall U.S. population). But dig a little [...]
October 23rd, 2011
A major Huffington Post article, “Could Unmarried Women Cost Obama Re-election in 2012?, examines the role unmarried women played in 2008 and their lack of engagement in the 2012 elections. VPC founder Page Gardner notes that this declining enthusiasm should be a cause for concern. “I’d be worried about it,” she said. “We did a [...]
October 11th, 2011
This week, Women’s Voices. Women Vote (WVWV) formally becomes The Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the organization that was founded on the observation that married and unmarried women behave differently politically evolves yet again. WVWV began in 2004 because research demonstrated that marital status was more determinative than gender in predicting whether a woman was [...]
October 3rd, 2011
This piece originally appeared on Huffingtonpost.com. This week a Denver court will determine whether Colorado’s Secretary of State Scott Gessler can keep eligible, registered voters in Denver from participating in the city’s November 1 election. Gessler ordered the Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson to stop mailing ballots (it’s an all-mail election) to registered voters [...]