It is time to admit that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was right about the Democratic Party being run by a bunch of miserable, childless cat ladies.
Just look at the exit polls. President-elect Donald Trump won married men by 22 percentage points, married women by 3 points, and unmarried men by 2 points. Only unmarried women chose Vice President Kamala Harris, and they did so by 21 points.
Despite all the talk about a gender gap, our politics is actually dominated by a marriage gap.
Married voters overwhelmingly support Trump and the Republican Party. Unmarried men are increasingly swinging toward Republicans as they realize the Democratic Party has nothing to offer them (other than a Planned Parenthood vasectomy van outside the Democratic National Convention). Unmarried women have become the core constituency of the Democratic Party. And Harris was the perfect embodiment of their values.
In her recent book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, feminist Hanna Rosin explained that the professional success of women such as Harris depends on the decline of marriage. “[Women] are more likely [than men] to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money,” Rosin writes. “What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion,” she continues, “but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom – the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career.”
Harris herself is a prime example. She chose career over marriage, engaging in a string of advantageous “temporary” relationships right up until age 50. By that time, children were out of the question.
Harris’s indifference to marriage is shared by her party. While 67% of Republicans strongly agree with the statement that marriage improves partnerships by strengthening commitment, only 30% of Democrats agree. Conversely, while 76% of Republicans strongly disagree with the statement that marriage is an “outdated institution,” just 29% of Democrats share that assessment.
Unfortunately, more and more young women are choosing Harris’s path. Up until 1960, about 80% of all households in the United States were led by a married couple. By 2010, that percentage had dipped below 50% and has now fallen to nearly 45%.
As detailed in my new book, Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage is Destroying Democracy, there is also a lifestyle revolution going on in affluent liberal circles, including open marriage, polyamory, and other alternatives to monogamy, that tends to weaken the commitment of couples and undermines family bonds. And it is the Democrats that are most open to these alternative lifestyles. According to the National Opinion Research Center, less than half of college-educated Democrats agree that sex with someone other than one’s spouse is “always wrong,” while more than 80% of Republicans believe that it is.
The vast majority of Democrats may believe that marriage is just a personal choice that doesn’t affect other people (73% told the Pew Research Center that unmarried couples do just as good a job at raising children as married couples). But decades of data show they are wrong. Children from unmarried households are less likely to finish high school, more likely to get in trouble with the law, and less likely to be employed than those from married households.
Married spouses also benefit from marriage. Married women are healthier, happier, and wealthier than their unmarried counterparts. The positive effects of marriage are even stronger for men who live longer on average than those who are single.
In fact, you can name almost any problem that is plaguing America today, whether it be income inequality, crime, declining social mobility, loneliness, or lack of trust, and all are being driven by the decline of marriage.
Fortunately, Trump’s agenda will help make marriage great again. By securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants, Trump will raise wages for low-skill workers. Opening up more land for energy and reforming the federal permitting process will also create millions of high-paying energy and construction jobs. Since women are hypergamous (i.e., they do not want to marry men who make less money than they do), this will lead to more marriageable men, which will lead to more marriages. Society will benefit from the existence of more stable nuclear families.
Trump and Vance have also highlighted the need to address high housing costs, a proven barrier to young couples tying the knot. Instead of boosting demand, as Harris proposed, the Trump administration plans to open more land for development and cut red tape. This is the right approach.
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All of the crazy, radical positions Harris took in 2019, from decriminalizing border crossings to banning fracking to taxpayer-funded surgeries for illegal immigrants, enjoy majority support only among unmarried women. No other demographic shares these priorities.
Most young people, including most women, want to be married someday. The party that helps voters achieve the lives they already want to live will form a winning coalition for decades to come.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
