From the NYT:

Democrats Count on Edge With Women to Limit Election Losses

By JACKIE CALMES OCT. 31, 2014 WASHINGTON — Democrats are nervously counting on an enduring edge among female voters in most states to prevent a Republican rout in Tuesday’s elections. Yet so great is the uncertainty that even before the returns are in, some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy.

You know, the economy is less terrible than it’s been for six years: driving around on Halloween gasoline was pretty cheap, lots and lots of people were out spending money, and I was stuck in traffic quite often behind new cars with paper plates.

The danger for Democratic candidates is that their advantage among women could be so reduced by dissatisfaction with President Obama and the country’s course that it is not enough to offset Republicans’ usual edge among the smaller population of male voters. Should that happen, a party pollster, Geoff Garin, acknowledged, “They’ll lose.” … Both parties’ strategists are scouring the rush of final polls and state tallies of early voters to gauge whether Democrats are succeeding at their ambitious goal that has defined this campaign season: persuading and turning out women, particularly minority and unmarried women. Those are Democrats’ most reliable supporters, but also the groups most likely to skip voting in a nonpresidential election year. Married white women are more likely to vote, and tilt toward Republicans. Democrats and allied women’s groups say they are confident the party’s candidates will do better among women than in 2010, the previous midterm election year, when Republicans overall won female voters by a single percentage point and captured a majority of the House and many state legislatures. Page Gardner, founder of the Voter Participation Center, which works to increase voting among unmarried women, said single women are more engaged than earlier in the year. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, however, suggested their interest is lower than in recent elections. “It’s certainly true that we’d be doing better if we were doing better with women, but I do not see a disproportionate drop with women relative to men,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

Here’s my 2005 VDARE article on The Marriage Gap citing a study by Anna Greenberg’s dad Stanley. The Greenberg Family are smart pollsters and they’ve been pointing out to their Democratic clients that the Democrats benefit from loneliness, heartbreak, and familial dysfunction even longer than I’ve been trying to point out the converse to the Republicans.

… Democrats have not won a majority of white women since 1992. Tuesday’s results, Mr. McInturff

Is that a real name? It sounds like a McDonaldsLand character who represents a failed upscale lobster and steak sandwich experiment: Mr. McSurfnturff.

Okay, I’m getting off track here …

added, would tell “whether it is possible that the single-minded focus that most Democratic candidates attached to the ‘war on women’ meant they never conveyed an economic and jobs message that might have led a higher chunk of the persuadable male vote to vote Democrat.” Republicans increasingly make that argument that Democrats miscalculated in their zeal to galvanize women who otherwise would not vote in a midterm election — especially since The Denver Post this month endorsed Mr. Gardner, the Republican candidate, for Senate, criticizing the Democratic senator, Mark Udall, for an “obnoxious one-issue campaign” about contraceptives. Democrats counter that Republicans use the phrase “Republicans’ war on women” more than Democrats to stoke a backlash among older and married women who reject partisan, feminist-sounding rhetoric and lean Republican. Ms. Greenberg said Republicans were “deliberately misconstruing” Democrats’ legitimate attacks. Yet she and other Democratic strategists complain their party has not effectively espoused a broader economic agenda, when women tell pollsters their top concern is jobs and the economy.

It’s almost as if men and women aren’t actually mortal enemies locked in a death struggle from which only one sex can emerge alive.

Seriously, how much does the Democrats’ “Republican War on Women” obsession even have to do with men at all? Do psychologically normal human beings even feel terribly rivalrous toward the opposite sex at all? Men tend to have strong opinions on subjects like Peyton Manning v. Tom Brady and women tend to have strong opinions on subjects like Mariah Carey v. Celine Dion.

Basically, what the Democrats have been trying to get single women worked up enough to turn out to vote is about turning elections into women competing with other women for society’s validation. Consider two sisters:

– A is married, has a child, and owns a home with her husband

– B isn’t married, has a child from a previous relationship, rents, is worried that when her latest boyfriend goes to drop his daughter back with his ex-wife after the weekend, he might just stay, and so she’s been texting this other fellow a lot, you know, just in case.

Siblings tend to vote along similar lines, but if these two vote for different parties, how likely is it to be A Republican – B Democrat rather than A Democrat – B Republican?

And how likely is it that B feels that A feels, even though she’d never come out and admit that it, B is kind of a screw-up and maybe just a little bit of a slut, and B, much as she loves her sister A, can’t stand that smug, successful A thinking that about her? Why does she think she’s better than me? So B is going to vote for the political party who make her feel validated. Assuming she remembers to vote on Tuesday, which depends on how worked up the Democrats get her.