Single women voted for Obama while married women preferred Romney

Nearly a quarter of the voters in the 2012 election were unmarried women – and Obama captured more than two-thirds of their votes, 67%, according to research by the Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund. The most crucial component of the women's vote is no longer white, married middle class suburbanites but a broad coalition of unmarried women, people of color and those under the age of 30. The unmarried women of the 2012 make up almost 40% of the African American population, nearly 30% of the Latino population, and about a third of all young voters, or 32.7%, according to the research. They are divorced, separated, widowed, or have never married. Single women have traditionally been Democratic voters, largely for economic reasons. They tend to have less money than married women – because they don't have a husband's earnings to fall back on. They also tend to be less educated. More and more Americans are single. Singe people are now the majority in about 15 or 16 states – several of them the swing states that decide presidential elections. Among women, unmarried women made up about 20% of the electorate in the 2008 elections. By 2012, about 23% of voters were single women – and they opted overwhelmingly for Obama, giving him 67% of their votes. The challenge for Democrats, however, is that unmarried women have not always been reliable voters. Nearly 11 million of the single women who turned out for Obama in 2008 skipped the 2010 congressional elections, which led to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.