Campaign aide Cutter explains gap in support for Obama among married, single women

By Alexandra Jaffe - 12/12/12 04:09 PM ET

President Obama's deputy campaign manager said Wednesday that Democrats did not have trouble wooing married women, but that the gap in support for Obama among that demographic group was simply reflective of the fact the Obama campaign turned out more single women.

Stephanie Cutter, speaking on a panel on "women's political power in 2010," hosted by progressive think tank Center for American Progress, initially cited the "pure demographics of who the married women are" when asked about the campaign's trouble with married female voters, but didn't elaborate on those demographics.

She went on to say that the campaign didn't fare any worse with married women this year than last cycle, but that they turned out more single women.

"I don't think we had a tougher time with married women this time than we have in the past. We just were able to turn out, for lots of different reasons, single women at very high margins," she said.

According to exit polling, Obama took 68 percent to 30 percent of the single female vote, while Romney took 53 percent of the married female vote to Obama's 46 percent among that demographic. It's unclear how high turnout was for those two groups this year.

In 2008, Obama also led with unmarried women, bringing in 70 percent of their vote to Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) 29 percent, according to an analysis by Women's Voices Women Vote, a progressive organization created to boost turnout among single women.

Married women supported McCain by 50 percent to Obama's 47 percent that year, indicating Romney did in fact fare slightly better with that demographic than McCain in 2008.

Cutter said that the Obama campaign found, in its research on married women, that "they got most of their information, or were influenced most, by their husbands," so she suggested it would be more helpful to consider communicating to families or the entire electorate as a whole, rather than just a single demographic group.

"So we can't ignore that fact, and [married women are] not — they have to be part of the equation, and obviously they're a part of the electorate. So we can't just think about this, 'How do we communicate to women?' How do you communicate to families? It's how you communicate to voters, it's how you communicate to the middle class, whatever you want to call it, but it's a comprehensive strategy. You just can't single out one gender," she said.