Unmarried Americans Make-up Fastest-Growing Share of the US Electorate
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 deeper. The real news to us from Gallup’s analysis of tens of thousands of nightly tracking-poll interviews is the growth of unmarried Americans. Gallup shows unmarried adults growing from 42 percent of adults to 47 percent in just two and a half years – from 2008 to mid-2011. Compare this growth to African-Americans who increased as their share of the electorate by about one (from 10 to 11) percent and Latinos’ representation which grew about two percent (11 to 13 percent) in the same time period.
Unmarried women, Latinos, African-Americans and young people under 30 make up the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These Americans make up 53% of the voting eligible population, were responsible for 95 percent of U.S. population growth between 2008 and 2010, but were only 42 percent of the 2010 electorate and 47% in 2008.
These two factors—the stunning growth in the RAE as a whole and the particular growth of unmarried women — are critically important to note because:
- Marital status is a major determinant of participation; unmarried women register and
turnout to vote at lower rates than married women. - While the groups in the RAE are the most under-represented and under-registered
groups in the electorate, they make up the new majority in this country and
their views are not being represented by their elected leaders.
At The Voter Participation Center we’re working now to register and mobilize these voters at levels that reflect their growing demographic strength and importance.