Unmarried Women Put Democratic Candidate Over The Top In Virginia Election

I told you a couple of days ago about how the Republicans had been hurt in Virginia by seniors moving away from them and toward Democrats. About 14% of seniors had switched their support. But while that hurt the Republican gubernatorial candidate, he still won the senior vote by 6 points. There is another group that probably swung the election to the Democrats -- unmarried women.

The charts above were made from a Democracy Corps Poll taken immediately after the election. It is no surprise that the Democratic candidate carried majorities of the minority vote, the youth vote, and the women's vote. The surprise is in the overwhelming support from unmarried women. Two/thirds of them voted for the Democrat, and only one/quarter voted for the Republican -- giving the Democrat a whopping 42 point advantage in this group. If these unmarried women had voted like married women did, the Republican would have won by nearly 7 points, and if they had just given the Democrat a small majority the Republican would have eked out a win. But they didn't. A huge majority of them voted Democratic.

This shows just how badly the Republican Party has damaged itself among women, especially unmarried women. Back in 2009, unmarried women just voted Democratic over Republican by 6 points, and even in 2012 they just gave President Obama a 29 point advantage. That makes the 42 point advantage they gave Democrats in 2013 look huge, and it should worry Republicans everywhere -- because it means this group is still moving further away from their party (and that could cost some more GOP candidates their jobs in 2014).