My recent memo to the progressive community demonstrates that unless progressives put forth a sustained effort to engage our base, there is likely to be a significant drop off in electoral participation in 2010.
In his national televised address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama showed that he's listening to the Americans that chose him to change the direction of America. Looking beyond his just-enacted plan to jump-start the economy, he called for new investments to create well-paying jobs, improve education and training, make healthcare affordable and accessible, and increase the nation's supply of renewable energy. Now the prospects for his presidency hinge on whether he can deliver the type of changes that will improve the lives and livelihoods of the emerging electorate that put him in the White House.
Just as Barack Obama is a new kind of president, the voters who supported him represent a new Rising American Electorate based on four pillars -- unmarried women, Latinos, African Americans and youth (ages 18-29). Latinos and African-Americans accounted for a greater share of voters than ever before, and the nation is trending towards a non-white majority by 2040. Young people (ages 18-29) outnumbered Baby Boomers. Forty-seven percent of adult Americans were unmarried (up from only 27 percent in 1960), and 26 percent of eligible voters were unmarried women (about as large a share of the population as their married sisters). The majority of all American households is headed by an unmarried person.
Together, these segments of the new America -- unmarried women, African Americans Latinos, and young people -- accounted for 52 percent of all Americans who were eligible to vote, but they represented only 46 percent of all Americans who actually voted. Each of these four groups supported Barack Obama by a margin of at least two-to-one, and, together, they favored him over John McCain by 69 percent to 30 percent, while the rest of the country backed McCain over Obama by 58 percent to 41 percent. Follow this link to view the Advocacy and Agenda survey.
Historically shortchanged by the economic system and under-represented in the political system, the members of the Rising American Electorate voted in record numbers last year because they urgently want to change conditions in this country and they overwhelmingly believe that Obama will lead America in a new and different direction. For President Obama and the progressive majorities in the U.S. Senate and House, the challenge is to produce the changes that these disaffected Americans demand so that they will break with their usual tendency not to participate in mid-term elections, such as next year's contests for the U.S. House and Senate, Governors and State Legislatures.
These are among the results that Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found in research for Women's Voices. Women Vote (WVWV), an organization that seeks to inform, involve and enable the nation's 53 million single, separated, divorced and widowed women to participate in the democratic process. The largest group within the Rising American Electorate, these "women on their own" have tended to be earlier indicators -- canaries in the coal mine -- for the trends that are transforming this country, including economic insecurity, the demand for far-reaching change, and a continuing faith in President Obama's capacity to inspire and achieve that change.
Having experienced economic vulnerability earlier than most Americans, 27 percent of unmarried women now say that they are unemployed or only working part-time, and 61 percent of these women asses their own personal economic situation as "just fair/poor." This same number -- 61 percent -- want Congress to "take strong and aggressive action to increase the number of jobs," rather than worry about enacting "too many costly new government programs that increase the budget deficit." For this reason, 75 percent of unmarried women support the just-enacted economic recovery program, and these women also overwhelmingly endorse providing universal health insurance, immediately expanding coverage for families with children, increasing opportunities for college and career training, raising the minimum wages, promoting equal pay for working women, and expanding childcare programs.
As the president and members of Congress debate and decide these and other urgent issues, the decisive factor will be whether members of the Rising American Electorate, particularly unmarried women, continue to participate in politics, suspending their cynicism next year as they did last year. Among unmarried women, 84 percent of unmarried women believed at the time of the election last November that they were "hopeful that we will see real change in the direction of this country." Right now, 83 percent of these women still hold out this hope. Nonetheless, only 61 percent of unmarried women commit to voting in 2010, compared to 68 percent in the rest of the electorate and 75 percent of voters. Voters who are not part of the Rising American Electorate.
If President Obama and his allies in Congress can continue to inspire the faith of historically under-participating Americans, including women struggling to survive on their own in an uncertain economy, then they will succeed both in enacting their agenda and expanding the electorate. That would be good news not only for this administration but for American Democracy, which depends on the participation of all the people.
Page S. Gardner is president of Women's Voices, Women Vote, a national nonpartisan organization that promotes the participation of the nation's 53 million unmarried women in the democratic process.