The White Dudes for Harris Zoom call was & weird – Washington Examiner

Gender polarization, the Atlantic s Derek Thompson wrote, is the skeleton key of the 2024 election. To which the Washington Examiner s Conn Carroll replied, It isn t gender, it s marriage.

In support of that proposition, he quoted exit poll findings that both married men and married women favor Republicans by similar, in this case statistically indistinguishable, margins (59%-39% and 56%-42%), while there are huge differences between unmarried men (52%-45% Republican) and unmarried women (68%-31% Democratic). Thompson noted a similarly wide divide in this year s polling between divorced men (56% Trump) and single women (29% Trump).

Those results are not atypical. The good news for Republicans is that three out of four groups favor their side. The good news for Democrats is that, in a society in which, contrary to the midcentury model, marriage is not universal, unmarried women are numerous and overwhelmingly on their side.

That s obviously the target for Democrats attacks on vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance s 2021 accusation that a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they ve made are leading Democrats to profoundly anti-child policies. It s bad campaign tactics to slap derogatory labels on large demographic groups remember former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s deplorables ? and, of course, has dismayed many who did not choose to be childless. The personal may be political, but it can also be tender.

In any case, childlessness has legitimately been in the news with the plunging fertility rate, down to 1.62 in 2023, well below the 2.1 replacement rate. This mirrors an increasing separation of the sexes, evident in less premarital sex and in political differences. America s new political war, the Wall Street Journal reported, is between young men and young women. Under-30s of both sexes favored President Joe Biden in 2020. But this year, Wall Street Journal polls find young women favoring congressional Democrats 60% to 26%, while young men favor Republicans 49% to 37%.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Byron York.