Politics by the Numbers

A recent poll illustrated that George W. Bush’s approval rating is at 33% a year before the November elections. Moreover, that same poll noted that 75% of Americans wanted him out of office. This is an interesting number when you compare it to those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. At the mark a year before elections, 55% of the population wanted Reagan out of office while just 47% of Americans wanted Bill out; strategists have been paying close attention to single women as the ‘08 campaign emerges. For the first time in our nation’s political history, single women have a slight advantage over married women. This number is important because recent statistics that measure political socialization tells us that single women are more liberal, and tend to favor the Democratic Party, unlike their sex counterpart. You may recall that during the ‘04 campaign Republicans made a big push to recruit soccer moms, who traditionally speaking favored traditional values, conservative social policies, and placed a greater emphasis on the family.

I suspect in the next few weeks, if you have yet to see it, a series of commercials will be airing to recruit single women. I imagine the commercials will target the beauty of being a bright independent woman who has made great gains socially and professionally. Because lower class women turn out at the polls in far fewer numbers in comparison to their middle class counterpart, those adds will probably place some normative value on these characteristics: professional class lesbian women, CEOs, academics, etc.