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E posted this link to the exit poll breakdowns yesterday, and there IS one thing that does surprise me, on reflection: the breakdown of women re: working or not. Working: 29%; not working: 71%.
Even taking into account the retired vote, only 16% of voters are 65 or older. As for younger voters who may be in school, it's hard to determine the exact numbers since they only give the 18-30 range, and anyway not all of the 18-22 voters are in school; but I'll be really generous and say that maybe half of that age range is not in school, so that's another 8%.
That still leaves 47% of voting women that don't work, and are not in school or retired.
Now I know that there are still plenty of women who don't work outside the home, and this isn't the space for me to discuss my views on that particular choice, but there is no WAY that number is represented in the general population by 47%. Trying to come up with reasons for the 47%, I considered that maybe they were reflecting a lot of women who weren't out of work by choice, but because of the economy; but if that were the case, Kerry should have, well, WON. Maybe the exit polls were taken at a time of day that disproportionately represented women who weren't working? But I have to give the CNN pollsters slightly more credit than that. (Maybe.)
So I'm out of explanations. Any thoughts? Are my numbers totally wrong? This is no math since eleventh grade talking here. Are there really that many working-age women who don't work and I'm just completely deluded?
Even taking into account the retired vote, only 16% of voters are 65 or older. As for younger voters who may be in school, it's hard to determine the exact numbers since they only give the 18-30 range, and anyway not all of the 18-22 voters are in school; but I'll be really generous and say that maybe half of that age range is not in school, so that's another 8%.
That still leaves 47% of voting women that don't work, and are not in school or retired.
Now I know that there are still plenty of women who don't work outside the home, and this isn't the space for me to discuss my views on that particular choice, but there is no WAY that number is represented in the general population by 47%. Trying to come up with reasons for the 47%, I considered that maybe they were reflecting a lot of women who weren't out of work by choice, but because of the economy; but if that were the case, Kerry should have, well, WON. Maybe the exit polls were taken at a time of day that disproportionately represented women who weren't working? But I have to give the CNN pollsters slightly more credit than that. (Maybe.)
So I'm out of explanations. Any thoughts? Are my numbers totally wrong? This is no math since eleventh grade talking here. Are there really that many working-age women who don't work and I'm just completely deluded?
no subject
I checked the math, and this is the only way that makes sense. If you subtract the percentage of male voters (46%) from the percentage of non-working women voters (71%) you get 25%. That 25% is the percentage of the total non-working female voting population. When you add that with the percentage of the working women who voted (29%), you get 54%, which is the total female percentage of the voting population.
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