Unmarried women anchored Obama’s victory over McCain last night, splitting 70 to 29 for the Democratic ticket. Obama’s margin among unmarried women exceeded his margin among both young voters and Latino voters. Meanwhile, married women actually preferred McCain, 47 to 50 – an overwhelming 44 percent marriage gap. Unmarried women – women who are single, separated, divorced, or widowed – also gave strong support to Democrats in House races, splitting 64 to 29 nationally for Democratic candidate. All numbers come from calculations based on the CNN national election pool conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.

“Unmarried women have changed America, and they are an influential part of the new electorate. This year we can say, unmarried women were heard loud and clear. They voted for change. Now its time for the new Administration and the Congress to listen to these women in public policy debates,” said Page Gardner, President and Founder of Women’s Voices Women Vote. “WVWV has registered and turned out more unmarried women than any other group and provided that community with resources they did not have before,” Gardner stated.

Currently, Obama has a 7.2 million vote margin. With unmarried women, he had a 12-million-plus vote margin. If unmarried women voted like married women, he would have lost by 5 million votes. In 2004, John Kerry won among unmarried women, 62-37, a 7 million vote margin.

Since 2004, Women’s Voices Women Vote has worked to register unmarried women – an historically underrepresented demographic – and has generated over one million voter registration applications to date, including over 900,000 this cycle alone. WVWV has also worked to ensure unmarried women get out and vote through efforts including mailing approximately one million vote-by-mail applications to unmarried women in Colorado, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, and Nevada; calling over one million women asking them to “Promise” to vote; mailing voter information packets to unmarried women in eighteen states; sending same-day registration packets to women in Wisconsin and Iowa; and placing a Public Service Announcement on national talk radio, in which Barbra Streisand urges women, particularly unmarried women, to vote.

Gardner reacted to the increased interest in this election: “Unmarried women, previously silent and underrepresented, will be heard and will be an enormous part of ensuring that there is a new day in America.”

Full poll available at www.wvwv.org. Streisand PSA available at http://www.wvwv.org/media-room/video-public-service-announcements.

Women's Voices Women Vote is a non-profit, non-partisan organization created to activate unmarried women to participate in their government and in our democracy.