Penna Dexter

Move over Soccer Moms. There’s a rising voting bloc in American politics: the Single Woke Female. She’s young — these are Gen Z and Millennial voters — she’s often urban and she’s never been married. She’s usually progressive, often discontented. Two professors, experts in demography, economics, and politics, write about her at Real Clear Investigations.

Joel Kotkin, a sought-after authority on demographic trends, teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California and runs the Urban Reform Institute. Samuel Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The professors write that Single Woke Females’ “power is growing thanks to demographic winds. The number of never-married women has grown from about 20% in 1950 to over 30% in 2022, while the percentage of married women has declined from almost 70% in 1950 to under 50% today.”

The professors point to an analysis of Census data by the Institute for Family Studies which “found that one in six women do not have children by the time they reach the end of their childbearing years, up from one in ten in 1990.” Young single women are often not as well-off financially as their married peers. Two incomes simply provide more resources, including a better ability to purchase a home. Single women are more likely to hold jobs in the lower-paid “helping professions” like teaching and medical care. Professors Kotkin and Abrams point out that “women predominate in fields that actually benefit from more government spending.” No wonder they lean left.

The authors say these women, often “not that keen on finding a partner”, are redefining families, and themselves, by choosing to neither get married, nor have offspring. The marriage rate is the lowest in American history. Fertility rates are dropping, with dire economic implications.

Research shows, having children tends to make people more conservative. “The longer people remain single, and perhaps never marry” the professors write, “the better things will be for the Democrats.”