Republicans have a big problem with women voters: Republican policies and candidates. Democrats have a different problem: getting women to vote, single women especially. Where married women may narrowly support Republicans, single women vote Democratic by large margins—the problem is, they don't always turn out to vote at all. So while Republicans launch PAC after PAC designed to get women to overlook Republican policies, Democrats are looking to boost turnout among single women by
focusing on a broad range of issues:
The party is using advanced data-gathering techniques to identify unmarried women, especially those who have voted in presidential elections but skipped midterms. By mail, online, phone and personal contact, Democrats and their allies are spreading the word about Republicans’ opposition in Washington — and state capitals like Raleigh — to pay equity, minimum wage and college-affordability legislation, abortion and contraception rights, Planned Parenthood and education spending. [...]
Democrats’ model is last year’s victory in the off-year election for Virginia governor. Terry McAuliffe, bolstered by groups like Planned Parenthood, beat a conservative Republican officeholder after Mr. McAuliffe repeatedly informed women about his rival’s record against reproductive rights. In a race decided by just over two percentage points, Mr. McAuliffe won unmarried women voters by 42 points.
This year Democrats modified the McAuliffe model to emphasize pocketbook issues too. While single women generally are socially liberal, “the issues they really care about are economic,” Mr. Greenberg said.
Just about every time Republicans launch one of these ladies-outreach PACs, they say "women don't just care about abortion! that's how we're going to get them," which turns out to be code for "we're going to say we're talking about economic issues when really we just mean 'repeal Obamacare.'" Democrats, on the other hand, actually have more than one thing to talk about, as the plans cited above make clear. And the Supreme Court, as Markos noted Tuesday,
helped those efforts with the
Hobby Lobby decision, which spans a social issue and a pocketbook one—birth control can be expensive, but unplanned pregnancy is even more so. And both are especially hard to afford when Republicans are blocking a minimum wage increase. And that is why, if Democrats can get the word out about what Republicans are doing and motivate the base, they'll win.