Another demographic factor to consider is the widening gender gap. Much was made of the Soccer Moms and their support for President Clinton in the 90's. Then Bush won without the women's vote in 2000 and people realized that women drifting to the Democratic Party has been met by men drifting to the Republican Party and the Soccer Moms were met with the NASCAR Dads.

An interesting spin on this which I've heard before is how much education makes a difference. In general, Democrats are an odd combination of the most and least educated Americans. Republicans generally cover the middle ground with folks that have enough education for a comfortable career but view formal education as a means to an end and therefore are disinclined to go for what they view as unnecessary higher degrees.

However, increasingly educated women are flocking to the Democratic Party and educated men are shifting to the GOP:

As education increases, the gender gap grows.

An analysis of more than 40,000 interviews for the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll from January through November this year shows the trend. Among those with a high school diploma or less, men were inclined by a single percentage point, 45% to 44%, to vote Democratic. Women leaned toward the Democrats by 11 percentage points, 50% to 39%. That's a partisan gap between the sexes of 10 percentage points.

For those who had taken some college courses but not graduated, that gender gap grew to 15 percentage points. Among those with a college degree, it rose to 20. And for voters who had taken postgraduate courses, it reached 28 percentage points - almost triple the gender difference among the least-educated voters.

The entire article is worth a read.

It's interesting how these things play out. My father is an old-style FDR Democrat (economically liberal but socially conservative) and Mom generally votes for Republicans on the basis that they're "our crooks" instead of "their crooks." So it's actually the opposite phenomenon there. While most of the women in my past lean pretty far to the left, the only affair that lasted longer than a year was with Anna, who was largely apolitical but leaned slightly to the right.

I think some differences are often a good thing. I notice that most of the leads in my stories come from different political backgrounds than their romantic partners and I don't think it's a coincidence. Of course, if people differ too much (or are too vocal about minor disagreements) it can be quite problematic. People often have different political views because they interpret current events so differently as to live in entirely different worlds. That has certainly been the case for me in the past.

Since Eel and I are apparently both Democrats, I suppose we will thankfully avoid this issue altogether.