What do you think about the study that shows majority of married people vote Republican
and majority of single people vote Democratic? Do you think it might be because married people feel more secure and feel they don't need Government assistance while single people especially women feel less secure and want some extra security that the government provides. Or is it a "family values" sort of thing?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to Bandit (Original post)
while single and married. It actually was my adult daughters (Democrats) who asked me WHY I was an Independent when I was against everything the Republicans stood for and never voted for them. They were right. I joined the party 10 years ago. So you could say having children brought me to the Democrats. 
At the ends of the spectrum -- whether its the Tea Partiest end or the Progressive end -- people vote ideology and belief. But closer to the middle, garden-variety conservatives, liberals, and moderates vote self-interest. Middle-class marrieds, and marrieds with children, basically live in teh GOP ideology zone: they move to suburbia, they use public space less, they guzzle more gas and rely less on public transportation, they even seem to become more religious (I can't tell you the number of areligious friends I have who went back to church or temple "for the children"
. Above all, in my experience, they tend to lose a lot of broader empathy and civic-mindedness; they become overwhelmingly focused on their little family unit and what's best for it (which is why the GOP appeal to lower taxes works especially well with them; their kids' food and clothing matters more than everyone else's food or clothing, no matter how needy others are).
That's a gross simplification and generalization, obviously, but I've seen it time and time again.
