The CNN exit polls do not break it down by race, just marital status. According to the results, married women voted 56-42 for Romney and single women voted 62-35 for Obama. Married women comprised 60% of the women voting and singles were 40%. Coincidentally, white women voted 56-42 for Romney, the same percentage as married women in general.
I would ascribe race as being more predictive on how white women voted rather than marital status. Given data from the 2010 census, we know that 41% of black women have never married compared to 20.6% of whites. 35.6% of black women are married compared to 57.9% for whites. As far as black women are concerned, they voted 96% to 3%, so marital status is not relevant for them as far as voting is concerned.
I am not discounting marital status as an important variable. But whether it is the most important and predictive is still iffy in my mind.
In the VA governor's race, by a landslide 42 points, unmarried women favored Democrat Terry McAuliffe over his Republican challenger in the Virginia governor’s race, exit polling shows. 67 percent of unmarried women (single, divorced, widowed, or separated) voted for McAuliffe as compared to just 25 percent for Cuccinelli. 50 percent of married women voted for Cuccinelli, as compared to 41 percent of married women who supported McAuliffe.
I would have to do more research to see if there is a further breakdown of how single women and married women voted by race. Maybe it is not PC to make such breakdowns, especially if the racial component skews the data. Black women comprised 8% of the total electorate in 2012 compared to 38% for white women. But that 8% voted 96% for Obama, which can skew the data for single women. 53% of the total electorate were women so black women were 15% of the total women's vote.
And there are other reasons that single white women voted for Obama than marital status. They could be Democrats. Party affiliation is a variable. How did independent single women vote? Romney won the independent vote 50-45. And then there is age. Romney won every age group 40 and up. Obama took the 18 thru 39 group, which has the biggest proportion of single women. How much of a factor were social issues like gay marriage and abortion?
The bottom line is that we need more data to determine how important marital status was as compared to other variables.
“The bottom line is that we need more data to determine how important marital status was as compared to other variables.”
I defnitely agree.