Reuters

Unmarried women targeted in election

Wed Nov 1, 2006 8:54am ET

By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For one Hollywood actress, the first time was in a garage. Another did it when she was 18. A third researched all the positions before doing it.

And they're not talking about sex. Angie Harmon, Felicity Huffman and Regina King are starring in a political ad, recalling the first time they voted.

The public-service ad is part of an effort to motivate more women, particularly "women on their own" -- single, divorced and widowed -- to go to the polls on November 7.


"They are the fastest growing demographic group in this country," said Page Gardner, president of Women's Voices Women Vote, the group that produced the ad.

"In 2004 they were 22 percent of the electorate yet there were still 20 million unmarried women who did not vote," she said. "If they voted in higher numbers ... they could literally help determine the agenda in this country."

Unmarried women tend to lean Democratic, political experts said.

Gardner said her group was nonpartisan and its goal was just to convince unmarried women -- who pollsters describe as a group that often feels "left behind" and uninformed -- that they have the power to make an impact in the vote.

Political scientists and pollsters said the unmarried bloc of women voters represents one of the key unknowns in the election. Women represent 52 percent of all U.S. voters.

TURNOUT A BIG QUESTION

Susan Carroll of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University said the most interesting questions about women voters on November 7 relate to turnout.

"The really interesting questions (are) ... whether women turn out and at what rate," she said. "That's why you have groups like Women's Voices Women Vote trying to mobilize single women."

Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said unmarried women are most concerned about economic security, health-care costs and the cost of education and transportation.

"The issue is mobilizing them and getting them out to vote and them having an impact on the outcome of the election," she said.

Carroll said women voters tend to be more pessimistic than men when asked about the current situation in the United States.

"They are more likely to say the country's not moving in the right direction," she said.

But Carroll said it was still unclear "whether that has reached a point that people are just so fed up and something motivates them to get to the voting booth."

Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist and president of a polling firm simply named the polling company, said she would be looking at two groups of voters in the election: unmarried women and working mothers.

"Women do lean Democratic," she said. "Will unmarried women turn out this year? Because they lean Democratic by two to one, that would be disastrous for Republicans."

"And many of the blue-collar moms, who voted more Republican in '04 than they had in past cycles because of the security issue -- if they go back to their natural Democratic allegiance, that could cost the Republicans a few points."

Greenberg said married women who had been leaning very Republican in 2002 and 2004 -- in part because they were concerned about terrorism and security issues -- appeared more evenly split between the parties for next Tuesday's poll.

"There's no doubt that the fact that security in this election is playing less of a role is helping Democrats with married women," she said.


Married women with children are concerned not only about national security but also about their economic security, energy costs and the growing crime rate in the country, the pollsters said.

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