A lot of attention gets paid to the gap between the way white men and white women vote. But a new report by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research helpfully points out that the "marriage gap" is far deeper than the gender gap: Democrats beat Republicans among unmarried voters by 32 points in the 2006 Congressional elections, while women overall were only 9 points more likely than men overall to support Dems. In other words, marital status is more predictive than gender when it comes to an individual's vote. Furthermore, every demographic among unmarried women supports a generic Democrat over a generic Repbulican for 2008: college-educated women, non-college educated women, rural voters, suburban voters, Southerners, Westerners. Socioeconomic status, regional identification, and age matter almost not at all among female voters compared to their marriage status: All these subgroups are 63 to 83 percent in support of a Democrat. The study's authors conclude that in their numbers and depth of support, unmarried female voters could be as important to a Democratic victory in 2008 as evangelicals were to Bush's victory in 2004. But just like evangelicals, unmarried female voters need to be mobilized to get to the polls. In the past, as many as 20 million unmarried women have skipped voting all together. The candidate of this demographic is Hillary Clinton, who yesterday gave a speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, painting her candidacy as a feminist watershed. But can Clinton inspire single women to vote in great numbers? What's her GOTV strategy? --Dana Goldstein
