I've been dropping links to this Rutgers University Fast Facts sheet on gender voting into diaries for a few days now.
I'd like every Kossack (hell, I'd like every voting American woman) to see it and understand it's significance, in a presidential election year in which the opposition Party is fielding a crew of 17th-Century-thinking misogynists as their banner-carriers.
There is a War on Women, and it's being waged by the conservative GOP and it's coterie of apparently politically-suicidal candidates.
To see just how significant the numbers are, meet me below the Fleur-de-kos.
I noticed, just yesterday, that the Obama re-election campaign has caught a whiff of this - or are possibly just reacting to the Fluke/Limbaugh broughaha. They are amping up their efforts on GOTV as it relates to women voters.
Good for them, they should be doing this exact thing.
Why?
From this linked Rutgers University.pdf file:
Graphic #1
and from the same .pdf file -
Graphic #2
Note the text:
Women, who constitute more than half the population, have cast between four and seven million more votes than men in recent elections.
The number of women voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964.
BY THE PERCENTAGES from the Rutgers link:
From 1996 to 2008
Women
Ages 75 + (59.4 to 64.9 = ) 5.5% rise
Ages 65-74 (68.1 to 72.6 =) 4.5% rise
Ages 45-64 (65.1 to 66.9 =) 1.8% rise
Ages 25-44 (51.5 to 55.3 =) 3.8% rise
Ages 18-24 (35.0 to 52.0 =) 17% rise
cummulative rise of 32.6%
Men
Ages 75 + (68.3 to 72.2 = ) 3.9% rise
Ages 65-74 (72.6 to 72.2 =) .4% FALL
Ages 45-64 (63.7 to 63.0 =) .7% FALL
Ages 25-44 (46.8 to 48.4 =) 1.6% rise
Ages 18-24 (29.8 to 45.1 =) 15.3% rise
cummulative rise of 19.7%
These numbers are staggering - especially if you note the margin of victory in the past few presidential cycles (data courtesy Wikipedia)
2008:
Obama: 69,456,897 popular votes
Electoral College: 365
McCain: 59,934,814 popular votes
Electoral College: 173
______
Popular vote Margin of Victory: 9,522,082
EC Margin of Victory: 192
2004:
Bush: 62,040,610 popular votes
Electoral College: 286
Kerry: 59,028,444 popular votes
Electoral College: 251
______
Popular vote Margin of Victory: 3,012,166
EC Margin of Victory: 35
2000:
Bush: 50,456,002 popular votes
Electoral College: 271
Gore: 50,999,897 popular votes
Electoral College: 266
______
Popular vote Margin of Victory: - 543,895
EC Margin of Victory: 5
1996:
Clinton:47,401,185 popular votes
Electoral College: 370
Dole: 29,197,469 popular votes
Electoral College: 159
(Perot excluded from calculations, as an anomaly)
______
Popular vote Margin of Victory: 18,203,716
EC Margin of Victory: 211
Now, we can see from this presentation of the data, that the
popular vote and it's Margin of Victory (MoV) does not translate directly to equivalent values in the
Electoral College (EC) tally, which is the result of our semi-democratic presidential voting system, but the trend is certainly apparent:
Now let's look at just those final data points:
1996 - Clinton (D) MoV = 18,203,716 and 211
2000 - Bush (R) MoV = 543,895 and 5
2004 - Bush (R) MoV = 3,012,166 and 35
2008 - Obama (D) MoV = 9,522,082 and 192
If the Democratic Party and women voter organizations focused 2012 GOTV mainly on women voters - and ran a women-friendly campaign throughout the summer and fall - they might just be ensuring a victory in the top race, and down-ballot races, too.
Let's use the noise and interest generated by the conservative #WarOnWomen, by ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, to energize and activate every available Woman Voter to register and VOTE in 2012.
By all accounts, even some of the Republican women voters have had enough. (I've read a multitude of comments by self-identified Republican women online this week saying so.) They were willing, for mostly religious reasons, to support and vote for only pro-life candidates (which have been almost exclusively Republican). They view abortion as an issue significant enough to sway their votes for national office, and they've done so ever since Roe vs Wade in 1973. They're voted Republican again and again and again.
But now, with the current GOP candidates, and their surrogates in the mainstream media (like Rush Limbaugh) supporting the 2012 move to make contraception and family planning a similar issue? To say, in public and on a repeating basis, that use of contraception by women transforms them somehow into immoral fornicators who don't deserve respect. For some conservatives, even married women should not have access to contraceptives, just ask Rick Santorum his views on this (I've heard him, he thinks sex is merely for procreation in all cases.)
Finally, it appears that reality has broken through, in at least some cases, into the faux-reality-bubble that too many of our fellow American women have been living in. Take away abortion? Okay, that seems like a good idea (as long as it's not my daughter/wife/sister). But to take away contraceptives? That's just not a good idea.
So say 77% of respondents to this recent (March 8-11, 2012) Bloomberg News National poll (h/t to Joan McCarter in today FP piece)
Oh, and these gals. Please, tweet, FB or link wherever you are online. Spread the word!
Transcript of video:
"Forcing women to have an ultrasound before an abortion is justified, because they already made the decision to be vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant"
-- Republican Lawmaker
"The agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts."
-- Rep. Bob Morris (R)
"If we're gonna pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."
-- Rush Limbaugh
"A woman impregnated through rape should accept that horribly created gift. The gift of human life. Accept what god has given you and make the best of a bad situation."
-- former Sen. Rick Santorum
"These aren't our words, they're all real things, said by prominent members of the Republican Party. Judging from their comments, the GOP must have a serious problem with women. And until the Republicans get over their issues, we women have a serious problem with the Republican Party."
-- the women in the ad
[emphasis added]
Hat-tip to
Jennifer Granholm and The War Room, on CurrentTV for showing the righteously angry Rep. Jackie Speier (D) (CA-12) on the issue... partial transcript:
"...Rush Limbaugh, shame on you. Shame on you for being the hate-monger that you are... so I say to the women in this country, uh, do something about this."
A Tweet comment from that last video:
by glassgoblin77
The difference is that conservative women are not mocked for being female, they are mocked for being morons. A woman who votes Republican is like a chicken who votes for Colonel Sanders.
UNITE, sisters.
Working together, we could change the face of American politics in 2012 - and the face of the future, if we do!
GOTV in your own neighborhood this year, Kossacks... contact your local County Democratic Party and find out if your precinct has a Precinct Committee Officer (or it's equivalent) and work with them canvassing your own neighborhood this summer.
If it is empty, please, please, please consider filling it it. All you have to do is arrange for you and about twenty of your neighbors and/or friends to knock on about 600 doors near your house this year, and remind the women living there of what the Conservative GOP has in store for them if they put a Republican in the Oval Office and the US Congress in 2013.
No abortion.
No contraception.
Lying to pregnant women by doctors, to prevent abortion choice, legalized.
These men don't think we women are the same sort of citizens as they are.
Let's prove them wrong, sisters!
Tue Nov 06, 2012 at 11:21 PM PT: Election Eve 2012: Barack Obama wins Re-election in an Electoral College landslide (274 to 203). Marriage Equality and Cannabis legalization pass in a number of states. Women voters may well have been the small wave in a cross-lapping windstorm of wavelets from all of the Democratic Big Tent Party, which pushed the President over into Victory tonight. It's enough that we will have Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Maize Hirono (HI) Tammy Baldwin (WI) along with US Rep Tammy Duckworth (IL), just for tonight. :) Congratulations everyone, the work we all pursued this year and last year have won a great LIBERAL VICTORY in 2012. :)
