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Voters without kids are in the political spotlight – but they’re not all the same
Oct 10, 2024
Jennifer Neal is a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. Zachary Neal is an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University.
In the 2024 election cycle, voters without children are under the microscope.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has said that “childless cat ladies” and older adults without kids are “sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.”
So it was notable that when pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she didn’t simply express her support and leave it at that. She also called herself a “childless cat lady.”
Politicians and others often use the word “childless” as an umbrella term for people who do not have children. But as social scientists who study people without children, we know that this doesn’t capture some important nuances.
Using large-scale demographic data, we’ve found that there are many types of nonparents – and each has its own set of political priorities.
The range of nonparents
Only about 3% of Americans are truly childless, or what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “involuntarily childless.” Most Americans who do not have children are not childless. They are some other type of nonparent. Social scientists often distinguish several types of nonparents:
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- Childless people want children but cannot have them due to circumstances such as infertility.
- Not yet parents are people who do not have children yet, but plan to in the future. They tend to be younger.
- Undecided individuals aren’t sure whether they want to have children.
- Child-free people have decided they do not want children now or in the future.
These distinctions matter. When nonparents are combined into a single group, they seem demographically and politically similar to everyone else.
But each type of nonparent is affected by political issues differently. And some issues are especially consequential for child-free people.
The ramifications of Dobbs
Take abortion rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ended a constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling limited access to reproductive health care in several states and created uncertainty in others.
Some politicians have expressed concerns about the fallout of the Dobbs decision. They’ve pointed to the inability for some not-yet-parents to access reproductive care if complications arise during pregnancy. They’ve also raised the alarm that Dobbs will lead to limits on access to in vitro fertilization for childless couples.
But these concerns are relevant only for people who want to have children. There is usually little talk among politicians and pundits about the importance of reproductive rights for child-free people who do not want to have children.
The share of Michigan adults identifying as child-free rose from 21% before Dobbs to nearly 26% immediately afterward. This increase occurred during a time when there was significant confusion about access to abortion in Michigan because state laws were ambiguous and being challenged in the courts.
Since Dobbs, there has also been a dramatic increase in vasectomies and tubal ligations nationwide. Some of this increase is the result of child-free people now turning to surgery to avoid having children.
Child-free people are overlooked in other areas, too, such as tax policy and in the workplace.
Child-free people pay federal income taxes alongside parents. But both Republican and Democratic presidential platforms have placed a heavy emphasis on expanding the child tax credit, which directly benefits only people who have or will have children. Child-free people work alongside parents. But parental status isn’t a protected category, which could be why child-free people tend to work longer hours and have less leeway to take time off.
Will a new bloc emerge?
Nonetheless, child-free people are primed to play an important role in American politics for several reasons.
First, there are a lot of them.
How many Americans are child-free depends on how you ask them. Data from nationwide face-to-face interviews suggest that around 10% of Americans are child-free. But data from anonymous surveys in Michigan and nationwide peg it at closer to 20% to 25%. If that’s the case, it could mean as many as 50 million to 60 million Americans are child-free.
Second, their numbers are growing. A range of studies suggest that every year, more Americans are reporting that they simply never want to have children.
Third, politicians’ derogatory comments about “childless” people have gotten the attention of child-free people. And they’re starting to organize. For example, Shannon Coulter, the influential activist behind the nonprofit group GrabYourWallet, is bringing them together through the nonpartisan Alliance of Childfree Voters.
It’s too soon to know whether child-free people can be thought of as a distinct voting bloc. But in our research, we found that child-free people in the swing state of Michigan lean liberal. While there are similar numbers of liberal and conservative parents in the state, child-free people who identify as liberal outnumber conservatives 2 to 1.
Given their size, growth, organization and liberal leanings, it may be time for American politicians to think more carefully about how child-free people fit in.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The voter fraud conversation is the wrong one to be having right now
Oct 09, 2024
Rajasekar is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Illinois Springfield and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
For the past decade, America has been mired in a repetitive, pointless conversation about “voter fraud,” helped in no small part by Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process.
During the presidential debate with Kamala Harris in early September, Trump insisted that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, and he has repeatedly hinted that he will not accept the election results this November if they are not in his favor. Since then, Trump and other GOP politicians have continued to put forward baseless arguments about voter fraud, including claims that Democrats are registering non-citizens and undocumented migrants to purposefully skew election results.
Time and time again, such claims have proven to be false. Across a variety of social science fields, the academic research consensus is that voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States. Furthermore, of the tiny number of instances that could qualify as voter fraud, most involve minor registration paperwork errors or physical damage to a ballot. Research about the 2016 and the 2020 elections finds scant evidence of fraudulent voting issues such as fake absentee or mail-in ballots, instances of double-registration, or non-citizens voting in state and federal elections. Overall, there is no reason to fear or believe that rampant voter fraud is compromising our elections. Nevertheless, this conversation continues.
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Unfortunately, America is having the wrongconversation about voting. Even as we continue to be distracted by talk of voter fraud, the right to vote and the power of the average citizen’s vote are under dire threat, particularly for certain economic and racial groups.
This is not by accident.
In the last decade, a wave of policy, legislation and judicial rulings has made it unnecessarily harder for some Americans to vote, coming from the upper echelons of the Supreme Court to local county boards across this country. This is the conversation we need to be having.
Under “felon disenfranchisement” laws in some states, people with felony convictions lose their right to vote. In some instances, such penalties are permanent even after prison sentences are completed. Scholarly estimates suggest that several million Americans have been effectively locked out of our democracy. The American criminal justice system is already rife with inequalities, meaning the impact of felon disenfranchisement is disproportionately borne by poorer and non-white Americans. Overall, the economic and racial composition of eligible American voters does not accurately resemble our country’s actual population and citizenry. This has had tangible impacts on voting patterns and several electoral results.
Additionally, the Supreme Court has adopted a highly permissive stance on state-level gerrymandering, i.e., the practice wherein a legislature redraws the lines of electoral districts in ways that mean one party is more likely to have a good outing on Election Day. Based on the judicial rationale that federal courts do not have the power to regulate state-level partisan gerrymandering, the court’s rulings in cases such as Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) and Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP(2024) have effectively given state-level legislatures a concerning level of freedom to redraw districts in ways that benefit the party in power. Gerrymandering is an absolutely undeniable fact in this country, and it has serious impacts for skewed election results.
In the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court nullified the “preclearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that states with documented policy and legislative histories of disadvantaging certain groups’ ability to vote no longer needed to gain federal approval before making changes to voting policies and practices. Immediately — in the span of 24 hours in some instances — several states unveiled new voter ID requirements, which research has shown to have disproportionate impacts on non-white and poorer Americans.
Meanwhile, the number of facilities where citizens can acquire a valid ID and/or cast their ballots decreased in many American communities, causing increasing wait times and miserable voter experiences., which can deter people from voting in the future. The impacts of these issues with voting infrastructure are also markedly unequal by race and class. Then, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Husted v. A. Phillip Randolph (2018) made it easier for states to purge voters from the registration rolls.
This was followed by an uptick in voter purges around the country, and some eligible voters have found themselves erroneously or prematurely removed from rolls. Voter purges have clear racial and class inequalities, and are particularly pronounced in areas that were subject to preclearance before the Shelbyruling. Overall, these changes have undeniably stopped many willing and eligible Americans from voting. Some scholars describe this state-of-affairs as a new era of voter suppression.
Equality in voting in America has been won via hard-fought battles. Women only gained the federal right to vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920, and several states during the Jim Crow era used poll taxes, grandfather clauses and outright violence to stop Black Americans from voting. And yet, in 2024, we continue to face policies and legislation that fundamentally violate the core democratic principle of “one person, one vote.” This hinders the voting process, skews election outcomes and ultimately undermines our democracy.
America is having the wrong conversation about voting. And it’s time we started having the right one.
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Total 2024 election spending projected to exceed previous record
Oct 09, 2024
Bryner is director of research and strategy for OpenSecrets. Glavin is deputy research director for OpenSecrets.
With weeks left until Election Day, OpenSecrets predicts that 2024’s federal election cycle is on track to be the costliest ever, with a total cost of at least $15.9 billion in spending. This will surpass the 2020 cycle’s record-smashing total of $15.1 billion.
Outside groups, largely super PACs, have spent roughly $2.6 billion on 2024 federal elections, outpacing spending in any previous cycle. If the current spending trends hold, OpenSecrets projects that total outside spending for the entire election cycle will exceed $5 billion.
This staggering price tag of the 2024 election cycle comes with caveats. Inflation between 2020 and 2024 has been significant. When adjusted for inflation, the 2020 total fundraising total would be the equivalent of $18.3 billion in 2024 dollars.
2020 presidential primaries were significantly more expensive
Former NYC Mayor MichaelBloomberg ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and singularly spent $1 billion of his own money on the race during a short 30-day period before dropping out on March 4th, 2020.
In contrast, neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump are expected to have spent or raised $1 billion through the end of September.
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Combined, Bloomberg and fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer spent over $1.4 billion in their own funds to self-finance their 2020 primary campaigns. Even without factoring in that unprecedented influx of self-funding, Democratic candidates in the 2020 primary still outspent Republican candidates in the 2024 Republican primary by about $500 million.
2024 presidential general election fundraising trends
Fundraising trends are moving in different directions for Harris and Trump. The replacement of President Joe Biden with Harris on the ticket has spurred an enormous boost in fundraising on the Democratic side.
While Harris has not announced September fundraising totals, Harris and the Democratic Party are projected to have raised about $1 billion or more from July through September, based on information provided by the Harris campaign documenting weekend fundraising totals, and what they reported for July and August.
Trump and the Republican Party raised $430 million over the same period, including fundraising totals announced by the campaign and party committee for the month of September as well as what was reported to the FEC in prior months. If fundraising trends continue, this will likely result in Harris exceeding the Biden campaign’s 2020 receipts, while Trump may struggle to match what his campaign reported in 2020.
Going into the final stretch before Election Day, the Harris campaign has not yet reported its fundraising totals from September, but as of the end of August, Harris and the Democratic Party reported $404 million cash on hand. Trump and the Republican Party reported having $283 million at the end of September. Based on previous trends OpenSecrets expects this to be spent before Election Day, in addition to money that will be raised during October, which could easily exceed another $500 million. OpenSecrets analysis of FEC data from 2020 shows the two general election campaigns, along with the RNC and DNC, combined to spend over $1.1 billion between Oct. 1 and Nov. 23.
Outside spending is up, favoring Republicans
As OpenSecrets has reported, outside spending for 2024 is well outpacing previous cycles.
As of Oct.7, outside spending — largely through independent expenditures purchased by super PACs and hybrid PACs — reached $2.6 billion, nearly a billion dollars more than outside groups had spent by the same point in 2020. With a full month of spending yet to be reported, OpenSecrets projects that 2024 outside spending will surpass 2020 spending before Election Day, even accounting for inflation.
This outside spending significantly favors conservatives so far, a switch from 2020 where liberal groups spent more money than conservatives. As has now become standard, the groups spending the most money are the presidential-candidate-linked super PACs with Make America Great Again Inc. spending over $239 million supporting Trump, while Future Forward has spent over $212 million supporting Democratic presidential candidates.
Cryptocurrency-linked super PAC Fairshake and its affiliates have spent $123 million supporting both Democratic and Republican candidates, an unusual pattern among top-spending super PACs.
While outside spending groups are generally required to disclose donors to the Federal Election Commission, there are exceptions.
Future Forward, the pro-Harris super PAC, discloses donors to the FEC but its top donor is a dark money nonprofit organization, Future Forward USA Action and therefore is classified by OpenSecrets as a partially disclosing organization.
On the congressional side, each of the four super PACs linked to party leadership are also partially-disclosing groups. Combined they have reported receiving nearly $72 million in contributions from their affiliated dark money groups. This obfuscation of the true source of funds to super PACs is a commonly used method by political groups to bypass meaningful disclosure, and we continue to see significant spending by non-disclosing groups.
Congressional races seeing more money than in 2020
While the race to the White House typically dominates coverage during presidential cycles, 2024 congressional candidates are also attracting record spending. The limit for donations from individuals to candidates increased from $2,800 to $3,300 per election over that four-year time period. This means that over an election cycle an individual can now give $1,000 more to a federal candidate than they could four years ago.
With the Senate held by Democrats and the House by Republicans, both parties hold spending advantages in the chamber they hold.
In the House, the spending gap is small. But in the Senate, Democrats have outspent Republicans by over $150 million. In every swing Senate race, the Democratic candidate has raised/spent at least 75% more than their Republican counterpart, including races where neither candidate is an incumbent.
While Republicans have currently outspent Democrats in the lower chamber, this trend might not hold in the next few months. Democrats running in the general election have collectively outraised Republicans, hinting that Republicans may have faced more active primaries or spent more of their money earlier.
Democrats running in the general election have, on average, about $175,000 more cash on hand than Republicans. This generally includes fundraising through the end of June with some candidates in later primaries having reported more recent fundraising information.
Where does the money come from?
While Bloomberg is not spending money on his own campaign this cycle, he still ranks among the cycle’s top donors – behind five conservative donors. This is the first cycle where the top 5 megadonors are all supporting Republicans, contributing to a major fundraising advantage conservative outside spending groups have seen so far.
The top 10 individual donors have contributed $599 million – 7% of all money raised – thus far for the 2024 cycle. Extending the list to the top 100 donors shows that they account for 16% of all fundraising, and extending it farther to the top 1% of all donors accounts for a full 50% of all money raised. In contrast, all donors giving under $200 account for just 16% of all money raised. With conservative groups outpacing their liberal counterparts in outside spending this cycle, it is no surprise that the top five individual donors to outside groups are conservative givers.
The total fundraising from small donors, as an overall percentage of fundraising, has hovered around 20% for several presidential cycles with a notable uptick in the 2020 cycle.
Democrats running for federal office in 2024 have taken substantially more from small donors giving under $200 than their Republican counterparts. So far, 28% of donations to Democratic candidates are from small donors, compared to 19% to Republicans.
Doug Weber, Dan Auble, Andrew Mayersohn, Olivia Buckley and Anna Massoglia contributed to this report.
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DEI is worth saving if programs focus on expanding advantages
Oct 09, 2024
Myatt is the co-founder ofThe Equity Practice and a public voices fellow alumna through The OpEd Project.
DEI backlash is prolific. Many companies inspired to begin diversity, equity and inclusion work after the racial unrest of 2020 are pausing those same efforts in response to pushback from customers and employees.
The reasons for the pushback vary, but for many, DEI represents a threat to status and access to resources. These fears are not entirely unfounded. Some DEI strategies aim to “level the playing field” by eliminating what some see as unfair advantages.
For example, research shows that white men are more likely to benefit from employer referral programs during hiring, which contributes to disparities in hiring and compensation. Some DEI strategies would end these referral programs to address these disparities so no one is advantaged. Eliminating the program strips people of something that helped them succeed. These types of shifts might fuel fears about DEI programs.
But as my grandmother said, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” What if DEI programs focused on expanding advantages for everyone instead of eliminating them and taking away resources from some?
Advantages for people in the dominant groups in workplaces are well documented and happen across the employee life cycle.
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Research shows that hiring managers value white people’s referrals of other white people more than they value people of color’s referrals of other people of color.
White people are more likely to have access to mentorship than people of color, which helps them navigate the ins and outs of their workplaces. White people and men have more access to informal networks that help them understand unwritten rules that affect how someone is perceived and whether they advance at work.
Resources are more likely to flow to people perceived as in the ingroup or dominant group. White men get better work assignments that make them more promotable than people of color and women.
Men are more likely to be seen as brilliant than women. The contributions of men and white women are more likely to be heard and acknowledged than those of women of color. Men and white people get the benefit of the doubt when someone evaluates their performance compared to women and people of color, respectively.
When it comes to developing and growing at work, white men are advantaged because they get more candid, developmental feedback compared to women and people of color. When they make mistakes, white men are advantaged because they are more likely to be forgiven for errors than women and people of color.
White men are more likely to think other white men have more potential than women or people of color, which leads to advantages related to promotions.
These advantages are examples of care, access, ease and assistance that help people succeed in the workplace. Ideally, everyone would have what they need to be successful and thrive at work. Instead of removing these advantages, we could reframe how we see them — these advantages are the resources contributing to success. Here are some strategies for expanding access to these resources to all team members:
Hiring:
- Hold open group information sessions with candidates to share insider tips about how things work inside your company and how to be successful in your hiring process.
- Expand referral programs to networks and organizations that can help you diversify your team.
Onboarding:
- Design an onboarding plan that helps new hires learn about their role, team, organization and manager. Be sure to include activities for knowledge transfer and relationship building.
- Assign an “onboarding buddy” who can help the new hire understand your organization's unwritten rules. Be sure to provide the buddy with training and resources so they are well set up to help the new hire navigate the organization.
Mentorship:
- Create a mentorship program that connects all staff with senior leaders trained to help staff navigate the organization and act as champions for staff in the rooms that staff are not in.
Expand the ingroup:
- Create rituals across your team that foster regular authentic relationship building, which research shows expands who is included in the ingroup. This type of relationship building is not about surface-level activities like icebreakers, happy hours or trust falls. Instead, it focuses on building a sense of shared vulnerability, safety and connection across the team.
Managing performance:
- Gather multiple, diverse perspectives about performance, which research shows leads to a more accurate performance assessment than single evaluators.
- Foster a growth mindset about staff development, and use manager rituals to help managers identify and celebrate potential in all employees.
- When there are performance issues, treat staff members with care and approach remediation with a restorative lens aimed at helping the staff member return to your agreements about expectations.
Career advancement:
- Create visibility for upcoming roles for everyone on the team.
- Use a transparent process for assessing criteria for advancement.
- Share power by using diverse groups to make decisions about promotions, which has been shown to mitigate bias and support more equitable decision-making.
Some may doubt companies’ abilities to expand advantages equitably, and based on the track record of U.S. companies providing equitable treatment of employees, that concern is valid. We can’t let unjust history keep us from trying new strategies to create a more just future.
Diversity improves company performance, and DEI strategies are necessary to benefit from that diversity. By focusing on expanding who has access to care and working to foster relationships that expand who is in the ingroup, more people will be able to thrive at work. Expansion instead of contraction — with an eye for supporting everyone — will help organizations get their DEI efforts back on track.
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She Should Run empowers women beyond Election Day
Oct 09, 2024
Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As we gear up for one of the most pivotal elections in history, it’s clear that women are more politically inspired than ever. Following the announcement of Vice President Kamala Harris' candidacy, the percentage of women feeling politically inspired soared from 12 percent to 59 percent, according to a recent survey.
Yet, despite this surge in inspiration, the survey — conducted in June and September by She Should Run and CREDO Mobile — found that an astonishing 78 percent of women are still not considering running for office. This gap between inspiration and action is exactly what She Should Run’s latest initiative aims to address.
She Should Run is launching the “VOTE, AND” campaign to respond to the recent decline in women candidates, and aims to boost women’s political engagement beyond the ballot box. While women are tuning out of toxic political news, we know they continue to show up for their communities and themselves. She Should Run’s goal is to bridge the gap between the two and bring the political to the everyday. The campaign aims to inspire 10,000 women to take the first steps toward political leadership and connect the dots between their everyday actions and political ambitions in the future.
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VOTE, AND is launching with a diverse collection of digital resources to help women prepare for this election season and with an array of partners to connect women’s everyday actions with their political futures. Campaign activations include:
- VOTE, AND Walk To Run: In partnership with City Girls Who Walk DC, on Oct. 13, She Should Run will host a Walk to Run event to engage women in the power of their future.
- VOTE, AND Finish the Fight: Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Suffs will elevate tools from Vote, And with a one-of-a-kind social media content partnership with She Should Run throughout October.
- VOTE, AND Pantsuit Up: In a continuation M.M.LaFleur’s #ReadytoRun partnership, on Oct. 29, M.M.LaFleur Georgetown will host an in-store shopping event benefiting She Should Run to help women feel their best on Election Day and beyond.
- VOTE, AND Lovingkindness: On Oct. 30, She Should Run and Happier will host a joint Instagram Live meditation session led by world-renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg to navigate election season with balanced heartfulness.
“This is a historic election, not only because we have the opportunity to see the first woman, the first Asian American, and only the second Black person to become president, but because of the profound impact it can have on the future of women’s political leadership. It is vital that we capitalize on the energy of this moment to motivate women beyond November,” said She Should Run founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro. “With VOTE, AND we can show women that their everyday actions are political, and meet them where they are on the topics and experiences they care about.”
While women are tuning out of toxic political news, we know they continue to show up for their communities and themselves. By combining core actions with education and curating examples of the many unexpected ways to engage women, She Should Run hopes to inspire a new generation of women leaders to take their first steps toward political leadership in the future.
Through digital resources, partnerships, and inspiring events, VOTE, AND brings women together and connects the dots between daily actions and potential political futures. From ballot evaluator tools to themed playlists, they offer engaging ways for women to explore their political potential. Women’s leadership is not just about breaking glass ceilings; it’s about using our collective power to make every community stronger.
With a historic election on the horizon, there’s no better time to show that women’s voices matter not just at the ballot box, but at every level of leadership. Let’s make sure that the energy of this election doesn’t end on Election Day. Let’s vote, and then let’s lead.
For more information, visit She Should Run.
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