Republicans have a serious problem in 2024: unmarried women. Republicans also have a major opportunity: unmarried women.
Unmarried women are one of the most Democratic-voting demographics in U.S. politics, voting more than two-to-one for Democratic House candidates (68–31 percent) in 2022. A majority of married men, unmarried men, and married women, in contrast, voted Republican.
But when a party loses a large percentage of a demographic group, there is potential for large gains. That is particularly true when that chunk of voters is heavily courted by one party and largely ignored by the other. Fox News host Jesse Watters might be right that “single women … have been captured by Democrats,” but Republicans don’t “need these ladies to get married” as Watters suggests. They just need to talk to them.
We conducted randomized-controlled trials across seven states in 2022, testing the same core messages attacking Democratic Senate candidates for the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA) and found the messages boosted Republican support, on average, about 1.5 points. But these messages worked best with unmarried women, who shifted +3.5 points toward the Republican. Unmarried women with no college degree moved +4.1 points toward the Republican. And unmarried, lower-income women with no college degree moved +5.8 points toward the Republican.
Unmarried women are in the market for information, and they respond when they get persuasive messaging — even, perhaps especially, when the topic is abortion. You see, the messages we tested attacked Democrat candidates for their extreme positions on abortion.
In hindsight,
