In the immediate aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections — a shocking overperformance by Democratic candidates given the fact that Republicans won the national popular vote by upwards of 4.5 percent — President Joe Biden celebrated with his followers. One group in particular, he said, ought to receive credit for the Democratic victory: women. “As I said,” Biden rambled, “women in America made their voices heard, man. I said last year one of the most extraordinary things about the Dobbs decision is what was about to challenge American women when the justice said they have it in their power to basically say let’s see what they’re going to do. Well, guess what? Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.”
Buried in this garbled syntax was the genuine kernel of a point: Democrats’ victory was achieved largely on the back of female votes. But not all female votes — one particular type of female votes: those of single women. According to an Edison Research Network Exit Poll, married men voted Republican at a 59-39 percent clip; married women voted Republican 56-42; unmarried men voted 52-45; and unmarried women voted Democrat at a rate of 68-31.
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