Not that Clinton is alone in his infidelity, given the cascade of sex scandals spilling out in recent years. More lurid tales involving Republican members of Congress are said to be packaged and ready if the House moves toward impeaching Clinton and Democrats decide to retaliate. But it's not quite so. Expressed another way, only 3 to 4 percent are having extramarital affairs in any given year.
Fictional depictions are powerful even if they're misleading.
Minnesotans who expressed an opinion on the subject had the impression that 4 out of 5 married Americans have had an affair, while experts suspect the proportion is about opposite. Not that we live in a puritanical age. Over the past 30 years, the culture has absorbed more premarital sex, more cohabitation and more people choosing to have children outside of marriage. But once committed to marriage, Americans tend to see it as a bond. The University of Chicago numbers have remained relatively constant since the research first was reported in 1991, when 21 percent of men and 10 percent of women said they'd had extramarital affairs.