Will 'swing-state singles' decide the presidential election?
If you are single and planning to vote in the upcoming presidential election, you may be one of the most influential and sought-after voters of 2012.
We're taking a look at "swing-state singles" and their influence.
This year there are 100 million unmarried adults eligible to vote and many of them are concentrated in states that are up for grabs: Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania.
The female single vote is particularly sought-after:
"Considering that unmarried women represent 26 percent of the voting population, their support was significant," wrote Lucas Kavner in the Huffington Post. "Though they have consistently supported Democratic candidates since 1992, peaking with Clinton at 62 percent in 1996 and then again for Kerry in 2004, they supported Obama by a steep 70-to-29 percent margin, while the majority of their married counterparts voted for McCain. But in the past two years, support for the Democratic Party among this coveted group of unmarried female voters has been waning. Only 57 percent voted Democrat in the 2010 midterm elections, and according to a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll, more than half of white, unmarried women voted Republican."
Kerri Miller will be speaking with Steve Lombardo, CEO of Strategic research firm StrategyOne, about single voters. He began working as a pollster in the 1990s. Michelle Bernard, Bernard Center for Women, Politics & Public Policy founder, president and CEO, will also join the discussion.
"Democrats, including Mr. Obama, have traditionally relied heavily on the female vote," wrote Richard W. Stevenson for the New York Times. "From 1992 to 2008, Democrats won the overall women's vote in every presidential election, with Mr. Obama defeating Senator John McCain four years ago 56 percent to 43 percent among women, according to exit polls. (Republicans have tended to win white women and married women, with Democrats winning nonwhite women and single women.) But in the 2010 midterm election, women, who vote in greater numbers than men, swung to Republicans, if barely, cutting deeply into the core of Mr. Obama's electoral coalition."
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