Disclaimer: Week 3 of the partisan candidate diaries. I am not associated with any of the campaigns, just a long-time observer of Democratic presidential politics and the father of a college daughter.

This week, I thought I would move in a more post-partisan direction. This diary looks at a campaign strategy that will benefit any Democratic candidate (including, of course,  my girl Hillary Clinton). But, before we get to that, something just to lighten the mood around here and have a little fun:

That was a public service TV ad  run in the 2006 mid-term elections by a non-profit group Womens' Voices, Womens' Vote. Here's another ad they ran in 2006:

So, who is Womens' Voices, Womens' Vote? A political action organization to research and target unmarried women voters - single, separated, divorced, or widowed. Why should we care? Maybe a few stats from the WVWV polling answers the question:

-- 50.3% of all US households are headed by an unmarried head of household.

-- Women made up 54% of the voters in 2004. 47% of women are unmarried. Unmarried women make up 25% of the eligible voters in the United States (50 million eligible voters, more than African American and Latinos combined).

-- There are 10 million more unmarried women in the US than unmarried men.

-- Unmarried women vote at a lower rate (55%) than married women (71%), but they are the fastest growing group of voters in the country. 2.3 million more unmarried women voted in the 2006 election than voted in the 2002 midterm. Married voters declined as a percentage of the electorate in both the 2004 and 2006 elections compared to the prior presidential and midterm elections, respectively.

-- 20 million unmarried women did not vote in 2004. 30 million did not vote in the 2006 mid-terms. A huge untapped potential that is increasing its voting percentages faster than any other group.

So, you ask: What's in it for the Democrats?

Married Men: Bush 60%  - Kerry 39%
Unmarried Men: Bush 45%  - Kerry 53%
Married Women: Bush 55%  - Kerry 44%
Unmarried Women: Bush 37%  - Kerry 62%

Stunning, huh? Basically, unmarried women are the holy grail, the whole enchilada, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the Democratic Party in national elections...and will be for the foreseeable future.

Looking at just white voters, unmarried women were the only group that voted for Kerry. Married and unmarried men voted for Bush:

Married White Women: Bush 61%  - Kerry 38%
Unmarried White Women: Bush 45%  - Kerry 55%

Marriage is the key determinant of women's voting, across the entire spectrum:

-- Married working women voted for Bush by 16%. Unmarried working women for Kerry by 30%.

-- Married union family women voted for Kerry by 13%. Unmarried union family women for Kerry by 43%.

-- Married women with children voted for Bush by 14%. Unmarried women with children voted for Kerry by 33%.

-- Married women college graduates voted for Bush by 6%. Unmarried women college graduates voted for Kerry by 34%.

You don't have to be a microtargeting guru like Mark Penn to see that every unmarried woman the Democrats can drive to the polls, the better the Democrats will be in election count. 25% of the voters, the fastest growing group of voters with room to grow, and they vote Democratic by an overwhelming margin compared to any other group in the electorate.

Where are they, you ask? Above average numbers of unmarried women live in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. As you can see, some of these states are crucial to a Democratic electoral college win. And, although I promised that this diary would not be partisan, I think you can also see why Clinton's poll numbers are so high in some of these primary states such as Florida, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and even states in the deep south like South Carolina.

What issues do unmarried women care about?  Their top six issues (percentages are those who listed the item as their first or second choice):

Get out of Iraq (47%)
Make health care more affordable (31%)
Keep America safe from terrorism (19%)
Improve Education (17%)
Raise minimum wage (16%)
Make taxes fair for middle class (14%)

It should be noted that 1 in 5 unmarried women have no health care coverage and 2 in 5 have some kind of government health care (Medicaid, VA, etc.)

Do these issues sound like the campaign speeches and TV ads of the Democratic candidates? Think that any of the candidates are speaking to unmarried women's top issues intentionally? Wonder why Clinton included "if you're a single mother trying to find childcare so you can go to work, you are invisible" in her first TV ad? Think the Republicans are pooping bricks? Their gay-bashing, anti-abortion, daddy-figure politics do not work with this group. Think they really want to run against Hillary Clinton, who is scary popular with this 25% of the eligible voters?

What about voter turnout? Glad you asked. IMO, the efforts that have been underway to target unmarried women are the hidden iceberg beneath the surface of the 2008 election.

Womens' Voices, Womens' Vote has been preparing for 2008 for more than four years. They used the 2004 and 2006 elections as dry runs, doing sophisticated market testing of registration and get out the vote efforts. They did registration and get-out-the-vote drives in eight states: Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. They did get-out-the-vote drives in eight more states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Montana, and Missouri. And, they did a test-market of mailings to all females on their 18th birthdays in 43 states. As part of these efforts, they have been building microtargeted voter databases. They have polled unmarried women extensively. (I'm not privy, but I rather suspect that Mark Penn and Harold Ickes have been busy building a microtargeting operation aimed a unmarried women. I suspect that's where a bunch of Clinton's Senate race budget went.)

The WVWV test markets were used to test four different direct mail pieces to determine which kind of message generated the best registration response as well as four different kinds of get-out-the-vote advertising. They tested mailing, second mailing, direct phone calls, and e-mail contacts to determine the most cost-effective outreach.

The tests contacted 2.1 million single women with 2.8 million pieces of mail, 1 million automated calls, and 697,000 live phone calls. They generated 100,000 additional pre-election registrations plus 400,000 contacts for same-day registration states. In their target states, surveys showed 25% of the new registrants listed the WVWV mailing as their primary reason for registering.

-- In the 16 states where WVWV ran their test marketing in 2004, unmarried women turnout increased by 8.25% over 2000.

-- In the 8 states where WVWV had their most test activity, unmarried women turnout increased by 10.5%.

-- In the 4 states with the most concentrated WVWV test marketing, unmarried women turnout increased by 13.5%.

-- The overall share of the voters represented by unmarried women nationally  increased from 19% in 2000 to 22.4% in 2004. How high could it be in 2008?

Links to WVWV and the charts with the data I've reported in this diary:

http://www.wvwv.org/
http://www.wvwv.org/docs/ppt/summary2.pd f
http://www.wvwv.org/aboutwvwv/index.cfm? id=4  

The organization is a non-profit, non-partisan operation. Most of their TV advertising was run as free public service announcements. Bill O'Reilly even featured a segment, blasting the Democrats for using "sex" to increase womens vote. I do not believe there are any limits on campaign contributions to this type of organization, so the funding might be huge. The president is Paige S. Gardner, a veteran of several Presidential and Senatorial campaigns. Former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff, John Podesta, is on the Board of Directors.

I'll leave you with another fun get-out-vote ad, this one done by Hillary Clinton's ad guy for the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee in the 2006 New York State elections. You may see a theme developing:

http://www.nywomenvote.org/

Discuss Democratic electability amongst yourselves. Grandpa Fred ain't gonna know what hit him, until he wakes up with tire tracks up and down his back.