This USA Today article, from the front page of the Thursday, 8/26/04 edition, pointed out two good avenues for action:
1) A sense of why married women register Republican and are more likely to vote for *
2) Points out the urgency to get single Moms to register and to vote.
Married women:
My synopsis is that married women are more likely among the more comfortable in society. The stress of survival does not press upon them daily, hourly, in the middle of the night, as it does on so many single Moms, whom I believe make up the bulk of the new poverty statistics just released. When you are comfortable, you can be, frankly, STUPID, uneducated. The number one concern with these women is terrorism and safety. Ergo, the approach is this: prove to them that Bush is NOT strong on Homeland Security. I'm doing a speech on this Monday night at a local political gathering, based on Senator Byrd's book Losing America. Main points: 14 times Bushco would not approve funding for Homeland Security, and he has taken all our National Guard troops away from the states they are supposed to protect and sent them overseas. He refuses to increase regular troops and increases instead the time they spend away from our shores.
DU HELP: please post any links or info proving Bush is NOT good on Homeland Security.
Single Moms:
DUer's please help with any ideas on how to reach these people and get them to vote. I was a single Mom for 20 years, with one child handicapped, yet often working two jobs. So I understand the biggest issue is TIME. One strategy is to get registrations done and then offer absentee ballots. But I don't trust absentee ballots. I'd rather drive people to the polls, entertain their kids, whatever it takes. I will be working on that stuff. I go out in the inner city on Saturdays to get people to register (at local stores), and I have volunteered to drive people to the polls and to work the phone banks to ask if assistance is needed. What else can we do? How can we get a hold of these people. Day care centers? Public schools? How can we approach people at those places? What I recall most from my years as a single Mom, is ISOLATION, largely due to my son's handicap (people understand physical handicaps, yet still avoid being around them...but a mental illness handicap is the biggest stigmata...you are completely abandoned by society).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-08-25-female-vote_x.htm(snip)
• Democrats for the first time are making a concerted effort to persuade single women, most of whom work, to register and go to the polls. The overwhelming majority of never-married, divorced and widowed women already support Kerry, but they have been one of the demographic groups least likely to vote. In 2000, 22 million unmarried women who were eligible to vote didn't do so.
(snip)
"You can make some difference in turnout among single women — 1%, 2%, 5%," says Mark Mellman, a pollster and adviser for Kerry. "That may not seem like much, but in a close election it could make all the difference in the world."
Most unmarried women — 54% — have annual household incomes below $30,000, according to the Census; that's twice the percentage of married women with incomes that low. Most married women — 51% — have household incomes of $50,000 and above; that's double the number of single women with income that high.
That makes single women more anxious than their married friends about bread-and-butter issues, less confident of having health coverage and more likely to take an expansive view of what the government can and should do to maintain safety-net programs.
Having children seems to intensify views on both sides. Married women with children are even more Republican that those who don't have children; single women who have children are even more Democratic than those who don't.
"Money-wise, it's very hard, especially as a single parent," says Evelyn Ocasio, 34, a widow who supports four children with her job as a receptionist. She is waiting at the edge of Wilmington's downtown square for the bus she takes to work.
"I worry every day, seeing if I can save some money for my retirement, but I really can't because I have to think about my kids," she says.
She supports Kerry but isn't sure whether she'll find time to vote.
Married women, who often have the security of two paychecks in a household, are more likely to cite Bush's leadership against terrorism as a compelling reason to support him.
The suburban women dubbed "soccer moms" in 2000 have been renamed "security moms" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
One of the TV ads the Bush campaign is airing is aimed straight at them: "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th," the president says.
"Safety, that's No. 1," says Donna Stranahan, 39, who is married and has two children. She and a friend, Kathy Garrett, are on their way back to work after lunch.
"I feel like living in the world today, you have to constantly be looking over your shoulder," agrees Garrett, 46, who is married.
She's enrolled her 10-year-old daughter in a karate class to help ensure she can handle herself.
She is registered as a Democrat but plans to vote for Bush.
"He had the gumption and the nerve to not just sit there and keep getting hit in the face" after 9/11, she says.
She faults President Clinton for not doing enough against terrorism and worries Kerry "seems to say whatever everybody wants to hear." Bush "isn't afraid to react," she says.
(snip)
But single women have received more attention from strategists because there are more of them — nearly 47 million eligible to vote, compared with 38.4 million men — and because women often settle on a candidate later and are less firmly set on their choice.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
