2024 Election Recap: Marrieds Vastly Helped Trump Win

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The gender gap was supposed to have been the big driver in yesterday’s historic and groundbreaking election. One campaign even famously encouraged wives to be dishonest with their husbands about how they voted.

But CNN exit polling showed the marriage gap was just as powerful in determining how citizens voted as was gender. Brad Wilcox, noted University of Virginia sociologist, posted on X, saying:

Just as women were more likely than men to vote for the Harris ticket, marrieds were more likely support the Trump ticket over choosing Harris. Married voters supported Trump by an 11% margin over Harris, while unmarried voters supported Harris by a 14% margin over Trump.

In a post-election interview, professor Wilcox told Daily Citizen,

What we are seeing today is both that married Americans and married parents are more likely to vote Republican. In this election, married adults and married parents voted for Trump in stronger numbers, so we learn that marrieds are more likely to look to Republicans for what they feel is best for themselves and our nation.

He added, “Leaders like JD Vance and Marco Rubio have advanced smart, strong pro-family policies and Republicans and conservatives are more likely to prioritize these values than are progressives.”

Wilcox and two other scholars from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently addressed this question of which candidate and policies marrieds tend to favor. They asked,

Is the long-standing tie between the Republican Party and marriage fraying in an era when the party’s standard bearer has flouted so many of the institution’s values and virtues? Has the emergence of a post-religious right severed the affinity between marriage and the Republican party?

They answer their own question definitively. “No, the data suggest that the relationship between the Republican Party and marriage has largely persisted amidst the Trump era.”

IFS’ new research report, using data from the peerless General Social Survey (GSS), “finds that Republicans continue to be markedly more likely than Democrats to be married — and this is true for several subgroups in the population.”

They add, saying, “We also find that Republicans continue to enjoy significantly happier marriages and somewhat more stable families with children than Democrats.”

Marriage has emerged as a significant class divide in America for the last few decades with the college educated and upper-class far more likely to marry over less educated, working class citizens. This is something all pro-family advocates must be aware of. Wilcox and his co-researchers hold,

Our analyses of the General Social Survey (GSS) and the American Community Survey (ACS) also indicate that the institution of marriage’s hold on American men and women has weakened, especially among poor, working-class, younger, and Democratic adults. That is, each of these four groups are significantly less likely to be married today than they were at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It is abundantly documented in mountains of leading social science and medical research that marriage substantially boosts all important measures of human and societal well-being for men, women and their common children. Promoting and advocating for the vital institution of marriage is a clear “love thy neighbor” issue.

It now appears that marriage is also a significant driver in the decisions citizens make in whom they choose to lead their country. This is an important truth that all pro-family advocates must appreciate as we consider how we can impact the public square for the good of all our fellow citizens.

Related articles and resources:

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women.

New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever

Mapping Declining US Marriage Rates

Mapping US Fertility and Married Parenting Rates

Mapping US Divorce Rates

Mapping US Unmarried Cohabitation Rates

Brad Wilcox’s Full-Court Press to Encourage the World to ‘Get Married’

Why Marriage Matters for Adults

Dr. Brad Wilcox Speaks About Happiness at Lighthouse Voices

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