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 [...]
August 26th, 2011 | By: John Lewis
As we celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, we reflect on the life and legacy of this great man. But recent legislation on voting reminds us that there is still work to do. Since January, a majority of state legislatures have passed or considered election-law changes that, taken together, constitute the most concerted effort [...]
August 11th, 2011
A recent article in The Economist on the “sorry state of marriage in the United States” quoted Census data that show that, for the first time, married couples now make up less than half of all households. The article concludes: Do not expect the Democratic Party, however, to make an issue of the marriage gap [...]
August 11th, 2011 | By: Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for Research, Pew Hispanic Center
The sluggish recovery from the Great Recession has been better for men than for women. From the end of the recession in June 2009 through May 2011, men gained 768,000 jobs and lowered their unemployment rate by 1.1 percentage points to 9.5%.1 Women, by contrast, lost 218,000 jobs during the same period, and their unemployment [...]