By Rick Montgomery

Kansas City Star

Unmarried females helped Democrats win last week in Missouri and across U.S., a study says.

Nearly 50 million strong, they span all ages, races, religions and years of schooling, but only now have America's unmarried women emerged as a surprisingly unified voting bloc.

The ballots of single women, a national study concludes, helped steer last week's election returns to the left and sealed a Senate victory for Democrat Claire McCaskill.

"Each election cycle, both parties look for the next bloc of voters that will put them over the edge," said pollster Stanley Greenberg, who oversaw the 12-state survey for the nonpartisan voter-education project Women's Voices, Women Vote. "Single women have the potential to make the difference in key races to both parties, particularly Democrats."

In the Missouri race for U.S. Senate, 61 percent of the roughly 400,000 single women who voted picked McCaskill over Republican incumbent Jim Talent. That calculates to a 100,000-vote edge for McCaskill within the demographic - more than enough to put her over the top in a race she ultimately carried by fewer than 50,000 votes statewide.

Researchers based the Missouri numbers on exit polls of 2,402 voters in the state.

Gender gap? Try marriage gap: McCaskill also scored well among single male voters, drawing 57 percent of their support. Talent drew majority support of married men and women.

Unmarried women made up 19 percent of the Missouri electorate last Tuesday - 1 percent higher than the national average. Unmarried men made up only 14 percent.

Calling single women an "untapped bloc" and "he fastest-growing large demographic in the country," Page Gardner, president of Women's Voices, Women Vote, said: "They are very, very, very progressive voters.

"These women are enthusiastic about voting, proud to be participating and eager to have their voices heard. They just need to be reminded that they have the power to enact great change in this country."

Ranging from young, single mothers to working divorcees to elderly widows, half the nation's unmarried women earn $30,000 a year or less. In 2004, only 59 percent of voting-eligible unmarried women cast ballots for president, compared with 71 percent of married women.

The single voter - male or female - drew more attention than usual as the United States quietly marked a marital milestone in recent months: For the first time, the number of married households slipped below 50 percent of all U.S. households.

Campaign rhetoric of the past several cycles had been aimed at nuclear families, typified by "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads."

But Lisa Martin, a 26-year-old single voter in Kansas City, said many of her peers might have cast ballots in the past based on "what they hoped one day to achieve - that ideal of a husband, wife and children living together."

Now, pressing issues such as the minimum wage, high health insurance premiums and "just trying to find some manageable way to live" are compelling single women to vote for change, as did Martin, a McCaskill supporter.

Gearing up to the elections, media organizations that are tailored to women's interests, including the Oxygen cable TV network, joined in a national effort to increase the turnout of young, unmarried voters.

"It's not that surprising: Women in general tend to skew more Democrat than Republican, more for social issues and less for economic issues" said Ann Klein, a market researcher in Leawood who has worked for GOP campaigns.

Nationwide, seven of every 10 unmarried women polled by Greenberg voiced disapproval of President Bush, compared with 52 percent disapproval among married men and women. Two-thirds of single women opposed U.S. involvement in Iraq, while barely a majority of married men and women registered disapproval.

Seventy percent of single women said the country was on the "wrong track" heading into the election, compared with 59 percent of all voters who said that.

Still, Klein questioned whether any candidate or slate of issues could universally appeal to a demographic so large and diverse.

"Grouping all single women - that would be a hard crowd to find. It could be someone 18 and pregnant, someone who's 35, running her own company - or it could be an elderly mother who's widowed.

"How do you get them all together?"